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205 lines
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<html newsdate="2015-10-05" type="newsletter">
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - October 2015</title>
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</head>
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<body class="newsletter article" microformats="h-entry" id="nl-201510">
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<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter - October 2015</h1>
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<div class="e-content">
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<h2>FSFE elections and other news from Bucharest</h2>
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<p newsteaser="yes">At this year's General Assembly in Bucharest, the FSFE
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<a href="/news/2015/news-20150922-01.html">elected a new leadership team
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for the next two years</a>. Reinhard Müller will continue his role as
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Financial Officer while your editor will assume the role as President,
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with Alessandro Rubini filling in as Vice-President. Alessandro is an
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electronic engineer working on device drivers and embedded systems.
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He was one of the first members of the FSFE and recently joined again
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to support us in our work. The FSFE's former President, Karsten Gerloff
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<a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2015/09/18/please-welcome-fsfes-new-president/">welcomed
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the change and wrote about his future steps</a>.</p>
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<p>The city of Bucharest was already warming up to Free Software several
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weeks before the FSFE's arrival, as Romanian public administrations were
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<a href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/145574">invited by Rogentos Linux User Group
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to test out two GNU/Linux-distributions</a>. This is a first step towards more awareness for software freedom in the country's public administration.
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After the General Assembly, we discussed this news and further collaboration
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with Free Software contributors from Romania, especially with our friends
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from Fundația Ceata, the Romanian foundation for Free Software and Free Culture.
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We found out that they are looking for skilled designers to contribute their
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ideas for a new logo for the foundation. So any graphic artists out there who
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are willing to flex their muscles for a good cause can find more information
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on their <a href="https://ceata.org/comunicate/international-challenge-logo-for-ceata.html">call for submissions page</a>.</p>
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<h2>FSFE’s evaluation of the EU Parliament copyright report</h2>
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<p>In July, the European Parliament adopted its recommendations for copyright
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reform initially drafted by MEP Julia Reda, and the FSFE
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<a href="/activities/policy/eu/20150918-Assessment-Of-The-Report-On-InfoSoc.en.html">released</a>
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its assessment of the final report that was approved in the Parliament
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after considerable amount of amendments. While some improvements exist
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in the Parliament's final report over current legislation, there are enough
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problems that it should be reconsidered, especially in regards to Free Software.
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In particular, the report fails to adequately address Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)
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that can still hinder the use of works that fall under copyright exceptions,
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and it does not provide a possibility for software developers to contribute
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their works directly to the public domain.</p>
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<p>In the next step, the Commission
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will publish their proposal on copyright reform sometime before the end of 2015.
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We ask the Commission to take the copyright reform even further and ensure
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that no exception to copyright should be ever limited by technological restrictions,
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to provide for a fully harmonised set of exceptions, and to publish all works
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that are publicly funded under a Free Software licence.</p>
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<h2>Tidying up PDFreaders</h2>
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<p>While wrapping up our <a href="/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html">PDFreaders campaign</a>
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it is worthy to highlight a few success stories in particular. Our German
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Coordinator, Max Mehl,
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<a href="http://blog.mehl.mx/2015/german-government-wants-authorities-to-advertise-pdfreaders/">blogged</a>
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about the success of the campaign in German government. In fact, the campaign was so successful,
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the German "Migration Guide" now includes a titbit about us, saying "If PDF documents are
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provided publicly authorities shall no longer only recommend Adobe Acrobat Reader
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for displaying them, but for example use the HTML templates provided by the FSFE
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on their websites for downloading alternative PDF readers", as well as recommending
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officials to expand to Free Software as viable alternatives.</p>
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<p>The FSFE helped to bring out the best in Free Software PDF readers for the
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private sector as well. Our very own Polina Malaja was able to
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<a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/polina/2015/09/10/free-pdf-reader-for-the-web-browser/">catch up</a>
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with our former PDFreaders campaign coordinator, Hannes Hauswedell, about
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his conversation with Google back in 2011 about releasing Pdfium software as
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Free Software. Finally in 2014, Hannes's request came to fruition. Now, we
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are not saying our campaign caused the Pdfium release, but we would like to
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think our campaign played a part in it.</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>FSFE Switzerland, in cooperation with the Swiss Open Systems User Group,
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sent out hundreds of letters to different political candidates asking them
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to participate in their online questionnaire, <a href="https://freedomvote.ch/">Freedomvote</a>,
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as a way to collect candidates' opinions of various digital issues that are sometimes
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overlooked like e-voting, open data, Free Software, and data security. The results
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were posted online for citizens to make more informed decisions about who they will
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vote for on election day on 18 October.</li>
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<li>Paul Boddie <a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=672">interviews FSFE Fellow Nico Rikken</a>
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from the Netherlands. Nico's background is in electrical engineering, and he
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provides insight into open hardware and education policy amongst other things.</li>
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<li>On 1 September the Parisian High Court
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<a href="https://www.april.org/en/paris-high-court-reaffirms-ban-software-patents">reaffirmed
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that software patents are illegal in Europe under the European Patent Convention.</a>
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However, this success comes only as a silver lining, considering that the
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plaintiff in this case was actually granted a patent from the European Patent Office.</li>
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<li>According to Felix Greve's PhD thesis,
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<a href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/145984">the German constitution
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requires vendor-neutral ICT standards to ensure interoperability in public
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administration and elsewhere</a>. The current lack of interoperability rules
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are a major barrier to the country’s uptake of Free Software.</li>
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<li><a href="http://www.fsf.org/news/now-fsf-cerified-to-respect-your-freedom-taurinus-x200">
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FSF certified Taurinus X200 laptop</a> to respect users' freedom. It also
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removes Intel's Management Engine (ME) which is a secret and proprietary software
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that allows remote access to the computer over a network, changing and upgrading
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the BIOS configuration, or wiping the disk. ME has full access to the computer with
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a wide functionality and could be a very useful security measure, but only if the owner
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of the device has the ability to control it. </li>
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<li>Public Administration: The UK government
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<a href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/145658">publishes an authoritative
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ODF guide</a> about integration of ODF with enterprise software in public procurement,
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<a href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/145784">the Italian military is switching to
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LibreOffice and ODF</a> making it Europe’s second largest LibreOffice implementation,
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at the Debian Conference "DebConf15" the city of Munich showed that they are <a href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/145626">
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a major contributor to Free Software by sharing software solutions and best practices</a>,
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and Open Forum Europe's Karel De Vriendt <a href="http://www.openforumeurope.org/windows-dressing/">provided insight</a>
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into the thinking behind European Commission's call for tender concerning Microsoft
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products that will further increase the vendor lock-in in public IT sector.</li>
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<ul>
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<li>From the <a href="http://planet.fsfe.org">planet aggregation</a>:</li>
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<li>Daniel Pocock <a href="http://danielpocock.com/the-only-way-to-ensure-the-vw-scandal-never-happens-again">
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argues that the only way to avoid scandals like the one with VW</a> in the
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future is to ensure everyone's freedom to see and modify the source code in
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the equipment that controls our lives.</li>
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<li>Dominic Hopf (now an official intergalactic diplomat) and new Fellow
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Pascal Wittmann, organised a booth at a
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<a href="http://blog.dmaphy.de/2015/09/how-to-travel-intergalactic-way-free.html">Software Freedom Day (SFD)
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event in Kiel</a> and gave a presentation about F-Droid.</li>
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<li>On a wet day in Frankfurt, the FSFE booth made a splash among visitors
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at the annual Rotlintstraßenfest who were eager to learn more about software
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freedom. Guido Arnold<a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2015/09/fsfe-info-booth-at-rotlintstrasenfest-in-frankfurt/">
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provides more details on this popular outdoor event.</a></li>
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<li>Meanwhile FSFE Fellow Michael Stehmann <a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/stehmann/?p=1554">
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summarised his SFD experience in Cologne (in German)</a>.</li>
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<li>Our Executive Director Jonas Öberg gave a rundown on the
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<a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/jonas/?p=20">logistics behind running a successful event</a>.</li>
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<li>Carsten Agger was busy organising the <a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2015/09/28/organizing-this-years-libreoffice-conference/">
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LibreOffice Hackfest in Aarhus</a>.</li>
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<li>Tobias Platen <a href=" http://blogs.fsfe.org/tobias_platen/2015/09/22/why-i-wont-buy-the-libre/">criticises</a>
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just how allegedly "free" Purism Librem computers actually are.</li>
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<li>André Ockers explains how concerned citizens in the Netherlands<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/ao/2015/09/26/why-we-convinced-a-dutch-government-agency-to-use-an-open-document-format/">
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convinced a Dutch government agency to use an Open Document format</a>, and </li>
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<li>Paul Boddie asks <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=1129">"Random Questions"
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about the Fairphone's source code availability"</a>.</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get Active: Nominate people and projects for the Free Software Award</h2>
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<p>Often users do not realise that they are using Free Software. Sometimes
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we need to explicitly state that fact. For instance <a href="http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/wordpress-brings-the-freedom-to-the-front">
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the new upgrade of WordPress</a> includes a tab with a reference to the
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GNU General Public License and the four freedoms of Free Software,
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explicitly informing the Wordpress community about the importance of
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freedom underlying their software.</p>
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<p>However, very often a lot of amazing Free Software developers and
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projects out there do not get the recognition they deserve. Right now
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the FSF is <a href=" http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/who-is-improving-the-world-through-free-software-nominate-them-now">
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accepting nominations for the 18th annual Free Software Awards</a>
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for people and projects who have improved the world using Free Software.
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There are two awards, one for people who have advanced the movement,
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and another for a project that has fulfilled a crucial societal need through
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the use of Free Software. Please submit your nominations until 1 November.</p>
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<p>Thanks to all the <a href="/contribute/contribute.html">volunteers</a>,
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<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="/index.html">FSFE</a></p>
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</div>
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<!--/e-content-->
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</body>
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<sidebar promo="about-fsfe" />
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<author id="kirschner" />
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<date>
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<original content="2015-10-05" />
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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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