265 lines
14 KiB
HTML
265 lines
14 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
|
||
|
||
<html newsdate="2014-02-04" type="newsletter">
|
||
<head>
|
||
<title>FSFE Newsletter - February 2014</title>
|
||
</head>
|
||
|
||
<body class="newsletter article" microformats="h-entry" id="nl-201402">
|
||
<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter – February 2014</h1>
|
||
|
||
<div class="e-content">
|
||
|
||
<h2>A big step forward for Free Software in Italy</h2>
|
||
|
||
<p>More public administrations using Free Software means more money for the
|
||
development of Free Software and less problems for citizen using Free Software
|
||
communicating with their authorities. In January the <a
|
||
href="https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140116-01.html">Italian
|
||
government has made Free Software the default choice for public
|
||
administrations</a>. The Italian Digital Agency issued new rules saying that
|
||
all government organisations in the country must consider using Free Software
|
||
before buying licenses for proprietary programs. The rule, which has been
|
||
discussed for over a year, has now been reaffirmed. Carlo Piana, who
|
||
participated on FSFE's behalf in the working group, <a
|
||
href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/italy-posts-benchmark-open-vs-closed-software">wrote</a>:
|
||
"Now public administrations have no excuse not to comply with the guidelines.
|
||
There are no more excuses, there is no room for ambiguous interpretations."</p>
|
||
|
||
<h2>What else is going on in the public administration</h2>
|
||
|
||
<p newsteaser="yes">First the bad news, the European Commission is still in
|
||
denial on their vendor lock-in and <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/01/15/european-commission-still-in-denial-on-vendor-lock-in/">Karsten
|
||
Gerloff offers good reasons</a> to believe that they are not serious about
|
||
using and supporting the Open Document Format. But there were also a lot of
|
||
good developments: The European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties,
|
||
Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), <a
|
||
href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/improve-it-security-ep-demands-open-source">wants
|
||
to use more Free Software for their new IT systems</a>. The <a
|
||
href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/ep-green/efa-use-open-source-secure-email">Greens/ETA
|
||
in the European parliament started a small pilot program</a> to increase
|
||
e-mail security, running 10 laptops with Debian GNU/Linux. The next step for
|
||
them would be to budget to pay for the Free Software support, like the
|
||
Parliament does for non-free software.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p><a
|
||
href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/munich-open-source-switch-completed-successfully">
|
||
The city of Munich successfully completed their GNU/Linux migration with
|
||
14.800 PCs</a>. They also announced that they will <a
|
||
href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/munich-continue-open-source-advocacy-work">continue
|
||
their advocacy work for Free Software</a>. EC's Joinup reports that <a
|
||
href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/oss-use-dutch-town-lowers-it-cost-24-vs-peers">public
|
||
administrations in the Netherlands who use Free Software spend 24% less than
|
||
the ones who do not</a>. In Denmark public libraries are switching to
|
||
GNU/Linux, and are demanding a complete free admin system. Carsten Agger, our
|
||
local coordinator for Århus/Denmark, <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/01/07/bibos-admin-admin-system-for-gnulinux-to-be-presented-at-fosdem/">is
|
||
involved in providing this system</a>.</p>
|
||
|
||
<h2>Compulsory routers: Private network should be private!</h2>
|
||
|
||
<p>You should be able to use a router of your own choice in your home, so you
|
||
can have more control over this gateway from your private network to the
|
||
internet. But in Germany ISPs started to force customers to use specific
|
||
routers, and did not offer them the internet access credentials to use routers
|
||
of their own choice. Together with dedicated volunteers from <a
|
||
href="https://openwrt.org/">OpenWRT</a>, <a
|
||
href="http://www.ipfire.org/">IPFire</a> and others, <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=1163">FSFE worked on this issue in
|
||
2013</a>, sending a letter to the authorities, and answering 18 detailed
|
||
questions. Our argument were then covered by German newspapers, magazines
|
||
and and television news sites.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>What did we achieve? The new coalition agreement of the German governments
|
||
says that they are against compulsory routers, and that the ISPs have to send
|
||
the usernames and passwords without request from the customers. Those are the
|
||
good news from the new coalition agreement. Our intern Max Mehl summarised our
|
||
work on compulsory routers in his blog entry <a
|
||
href="http://blog.max-mehl.com/2014/why-free-choice-of-routers-is-an-unnegotiable-must/">"Why
|
||
free choice of routers is a must"</a>.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>But although the coalition agreement by CDU/CSU und SPD is an improvement
|
||
for Free Software compared to the one from the last Government, there are still
|
||
some <a href="https://fsfe.org/news/2013/news-20131211-01.en.html">critical
|
||
points, which we pointed out in our press release</a> (in German, but Joinup published a
|
||
<a
|
||
href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/fsfe-german-coalition-should-prioritise-open-source">good
|
||
article in English about it</a>).</p>
|
||
|
||
<h2>Something completely different</h2>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
|
||
<li>You might have noticed it already: Our web team applied a new design to
|
||
FSFE's website. Hugo Roy <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/hugo/2014/01/a-new-website-for-fsfe-org/">announced
|
||
the plans in the beginning of the month</a>. The new design should make the
|
||
website better usable on every screen (tiny mobile, mobile, big mobile/tablet,
|
||
laptops, desktops, whatevercomesnext) and we will reuse this for
|
||
www.,wiki.,planet.,fellowship., search. and eventually, blogs.fsfe.org. Hugo
|
||
documented <a href="/contribute/template">how to use the new web design in a
|
||
template article</a>, and <a href="/contribute/web/css.html">how to edit our
|
||
CSS with LESS</a>.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li><a href="http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/29160.html">Matthew Garrett criticised
|
||
Canonical's contributor agreement</a>. Other copyright assignment tools,
|
||
such as <a href="https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/fiduciary.en.html">FSFE's
|
||
Fiduciary License Agreement</a> and the GNU Project's copyright assignment,
|
||
enable developers to prevent their code from being used in non-free software.
|
||
In contrast, Canonical's agreement explicitly states that the company may
|
||
distribute people's contributions under non-free licenses. If you value
|
||
software freedom, FSFE recommends you <strong>not to sign</strong> agreements
|
||
which make it possible to distribute your code under non-free licenses.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>Get 46.03€ back for an unused Microsoft Windows license. Rui Miguel Silva
|
||
Seabra explains in a series of <a
|
||
href="https://blog.1407.org/2014/01/10/got-my-windows-refund-and-so-can-you/">blog
|
||
entries how he was successful to get a Windows tax refund in Portugal</a>. You
|
||
can help us to keep <a
|
||
href="https://www.wiki.fsfe.org/WindowsTaxRefund">Windows Tax Refund wiki up to
|
||
date</a>.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>Fellowship representative Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild and other Free
|
||
Software supporters <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/english/2014/01/27/a-short-excursion-into-the-estonian-language-and-its-corpus-planning-as-it-relates-to-free-software/">convinced
|
||
the Institute of the Estonian Language to differ between Free Software and
|
||
gratis software</a>.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>Local groups: Carsten Agger, our local group coordinator from Aahrus
|
||
Denmark, started <a href="http://www.modspil.dk/itpolitik/">blogging about
|
||
Free Software and FSFE in Danish</a>. <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/english/2014/01/25/manchester-cryptoparty-on-dec-7-2013/">FSFE's
|
||
local group in Manchester ran a Cryptoparty</a> and explained public/private
|
||
key encryption with actual locks, keys, and a diary. We had our <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2013/12/first-fellowship-meeting-in-aschaffenburg/">first
|
||
Fellowship meeting in Aschaffenburg</a>, and at the <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/01/fellowship-meeting-rheinmain-in-frankfurt-jan-2014/">meeting
|
||
in Frankfurt</a> local Free Software activists discussed <a
|
||
href="http://ilovefs.org">I love Free Software</a>, <a
|
||
href="http://documentfreedom.org">Document Freedom Day</a>, <a
|
||
href="/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.html">PDFreaders</a>, <a
|
||
href="http://theydontwantyou.to">TheyDontWantYou.to</a>, the local event
|
||
Fuxcon, and CryptoParties.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>Interesting news about Free Software in education are covered in <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/01/free-software-in-education-news-december">Guido
|
||
Arnold's latest update</a>,</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>and an edited version of Benjamin Mako Hill's talk <a
|
||
href="http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/when-free-software-isnt-better-talk">"When
|
||
Free Software isn't better" is now available</a>.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>From the <a href="http://planet.fsfe.org">planet aggregation</a>: </li>
|
||
|
||
<ul>
|
||
|
||
<li><a href="http://danielpocock.com/debian-sip-federation">Debian.org
|
||
enabled SIP federation</a>. Furthermore Daniel Pocock describes how easy it
|
||
is to have a <a
|
||
href="http://danielpocock.com/webrtc-calling-firefox-android-chromium-linux">phone
|
||
call from a mobile phone to a desktop system using WebRTC</a>.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>Fellow No 1, Mario Fux, wrote about the <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=189">2014 Free Software meetings in
|
||
Randa/Switzerland about several KDE topics, Open Street Map, and usability</a>.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>Who was the creator of an image, what is its terms of use, where was it
|
||
created and when? This information often gets lost. Former FSFE's Vice
|
||
President Jonas Öberg wants to fix this, and <a
|
||
href="http://commonsmachinery.se/2014/01/another-year-of-fellowship/">received
|
||
another year of funding by the Shuttleworth Foundation for working on
|
||
Commons Machinery</a>.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>Are you looking for ways to get your children in touch with technology?
|
||
Isabel Drost-Fromm was asked how to achieve that and <a
|
||
href="http://blog.drost-fromm.de/posts/children-tinkering.html">wrote
|
||
about it in "Children tinkering"</a>. But be careful, like mentioned in
|
||
the <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/01/free-software-in-education-news-december/">quote
|
||
from the December education news</a>: If your children start hacking, companies
|
||
might want to hire them.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li><a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2014/01/21/ec-copyright-consulation/">Lucile
|
||
Falgueyrac organised a meeting about the European Commission's consultation
|
||
on copyright</a> to share knowledge about the consultation, and she <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2014/01/28/interview-rt-russia-today/">wrote
|
||
about her first television interview in Russia Today</a>.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>The KDE Community released a tech preview of the upcoming KDE 5
|
||
Frameworks, <a
|
||
href="http://creative-destruction.me/2014/01/07/kde-frameworks-5-tech-preview-released-with-updated-threadweaver/">
|
||
Mirko Böhm summarised the changes</a>.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>Tobias Platen wrote about <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/tobias_platen/2014/01/05/gnulinux-on-mobile-devices-and-single-board-computers/">GNU/Linux
|
||
on mobile devices and single board computers</a>.</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>Paul Boddie wrote an article about <a
|
||
href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=635">"Python 3: I Told You
|
||
So?"</a> explaining why it may be easier for users to choose another
|
||
technology entirely than to deal with version 3,</li>
|
||
|
||
<li>and your editor found his <a
|
||
href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/memories-about-some-old-free-software-floppies-and-cds">old Free
|
||
Software floppies and CDs</a>, and remembered how he got involved in Free
|
||
Software.</li>
|
||
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<h2>Get active: You love Free Software? Show it!</h2>
|
||
|
||
<p>Free Software eases our daily life and ensures we can work and create in
|
||
freedom. In many cases, we do not pay for these tools and yet we write bug
|
||
reports to make the developer improving his software even more. On 14 February
|
||
we ask you to show your love to the people working on the Free Software you
|
||
use. For example, you could prepare a "love letter" telling the developers of a
|
||
certain program why you love their work, include <a
|
||
href="/campaigns/ilovefs/2014/banners.html">banners or buttons</a> on your
|
||
website, (micro)blog about your favourite piece of software, or <a
|
||
href="https://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2014-January/009966.html">help
|
||
us collecting quotes</a> by well-known people and yourself. On "<a
|
||
href="http://ilovefs.org">I love Free Software day</a>", it is time to give
|
||
back.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>In Manchester, our local group is even celebrating Free Software with a
|
||
week-long event. The "<a href="http://freeasinfreedom.org.uk/?page_id=88">I
|
||
love Free Software Festival</a>" takes place from 3 to 8 February 2014 and
|
||
focusses especially on Bitcoin, Wordpress, encryption, and <a
|
||
href="/campaigns/android/android.html">Free Your Android</a>. It is a great
|
||
opportunity to meet other likeminded people in MadLab's great atmosphere.</p>
|
||
|
||
<p>Thanks to all the <a href="/contribute/contribute.html">volunteers</a>, <a href="http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join">Fellows</a> and
|
||
<a href="/donate/thankgnus.html">corporate donors</a> who enable our work,<br/>
|
||
<a href="/about/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="http://www.fsfe.org">FSFE</a></p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!--/e-content-->
|
||
|
||
</body>
|
||
<sidebar promo="about-fsfe"><!--
|
||
<h3>FSFE News</h3>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><a href="/news/">Press Releases</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="http://planet.fsfe.org/">Planet Blogs</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="/contact/community.html">Free Software Discussions</a></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
--></sidebar>
|
||
<author id="kirschner" />
|
||
<date>
|
||
<original content="2014-02-04" />
|
||
</date>
|
||
<followup>donate</followup>
|
||
<tags>
|
||
<tag>newsletter</tag>
|
||
</tags>
|
||
|
||
</html>
|
||
<!--
|
||
Local Variables: ***
|
||
mode: xml ***
|
||
End: ***
|
||
-->
|