253 lines
12 KiB
HTML
253 lines
12 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<html newsdate="2013-09-04" type="newsletter">
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<version>1</version>
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - September 2013</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1>FSFE Newsletter - September 2013</h1>
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<h2>F-Droid: Privacy aware software repository for Android</h2>
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<p><a href="http://f-droid.org">F-Droid</a> is a project that
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provides Free Software applications for Android via a repository system, much
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like most package systems of the GNU/Linux distributions. This differs from
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other mobile app markets, like Google Play or Apple's AppStore, since the
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client and server side software respect your freedoms and do not force you to
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register an account to use them. F-Droid's settings will value your privacy:
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although you can choose to enable it, by default it does not show programs
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which 1) show advertisement, 2) track and report your activity, promote 3)
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non-free add-ons or 4) non-free network services, or 5) depend on other
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non-free apps. That is why since the beginning of FSFE's <a
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href="/activities/android/android.html">"Free Your Android" campaign</a> we
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point people to F-Droid.</p>
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<p>For the last two months <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mvdan/">Daniel
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Martí</a>, one of the F-Droid developers, was <a
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href="/about/jobs/internship.html">an intern in FSFE's Berlin office</a>.
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Beside participating in FSFE's day to day business, improving our newsletter
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publishing process and some other nice tools for FSFE's work, he gave two
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F-Droid workshops in Berlin. In the workshops he toughed others how to include
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new programs into the F-Droid repository, and <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mvdan/2013/08/18/thoughts-after-the-two-first-f-droid-workshops/">documented
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what he learnt from the first two workshops</a>. As you can see in <a
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href="/events/events.html">FSFE's event section</a>, Daniel already announced
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general <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=1000">Free Your Android
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workshops</a> in Spain, and will also continue giving F-Droid workshops.</p>
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<p>To promote F-Droid Torsten Grote and others from <a
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href="https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/android">our android list</a>
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finalised a new F-Droid leaflet. So if you want to promote a Free Software
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repository for Android, you can <a
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href="/activities/android/promomaterial/fdroid-folder.pdf">print the new
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leaflets yourself</a>, <a
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href="/contribute/spreadtheword.html#free-your-android-campaign">order them
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from FSFE</a>, or <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">make a donation so FSFE can
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continue to distribute our leaflets widely</a>.</p>
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<h2>New Zealand bans software patents</h2>
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<p>As one of the <a
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href="/activities/swpat/swpat.html">organisations working
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to get rid of software patents for over a decade now</a>, and the <a
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href="/news/2013/news-20130612-01.html">recent success in
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Germany</a>, FSFE welcomes <a
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href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/in-historic-vote-new-zealand-bans-software-patents/">New
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Zealand's decision to ban software patents</a>. It also contains the
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potentially troublesome "as such" wording, which some courts in the EU
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interpreted to permit software patents. But in New Zealand they made clear how
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to interpret this: you can only patent it if the inventive step is not merely
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in the software. Besides, the law seems to get around the TRIPS requirement
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that all inventions in all fields of technology have to be patentable by
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stating that computer programs are not inventions, and therefore not
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patentable.</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>Due to the revealed surveillance Groklaw founder <a
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href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175">PJ
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announced that she does not see another way than to shut down the news
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site</a>. Groklaw helped to defend Free Software against FUD in the SCO
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case, during the <a href="/activities/msooxml/msooxml-interoperability.html">OOXML
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fight</a>, and followed the <a
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href="/activities/ms-vs-eu/ms-vs-eu.html">Microsoft
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antitrust case that FSFE won together with Samba</a>. As Fellow Paul Adams put it <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=625">"The world of IT is just that
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little bit less safe without Groklaw"</a>. In future it will be harder to
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counter big IT companies spin-doctoring.</li>
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<li>As every month Guido Arnold <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2013/08/free-software-in-education-news-july-2013/">gathered
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all education related news</a>. He also wrote about a <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2013/08/free-software-experience-in-westcliff-high-school-england/">
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school in the southeast of England</a>, which began switching its
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student-facing computers to GNU/Linux. Stuart Jarvis interviewed the school's
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Network Manager which is a good case study to refer to.</li>
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<li>FSFE was also active in giving talks: Karsten Gerloff's keynote at the
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Euskalencounter festival in Bilbao received huge press attention in the
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Spanish speaking media, for example in <a
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href="http://www.tercerainformacion.es/spip.php?article55629">Tercera en
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Linea (Spanish)</a>. In his talk "All watched over by machines of loving
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grace" he talked about the question of who controls our machines.</li>
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<li>In a lightning talk at KDE's Akademy Matija explained <a
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href="/activities/ftf/fiduciary.html">FSFE's fiduciary programme</a>. The
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<a
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href="http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/kde/extrafiles/akademy/2013/videos/Lightning_Talks.webm">Video
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recording is now available</a>.</li>
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<li>German Deputy coordinator Torsten Grote again spent a lot of his
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volunteer time to give interviews for the German radio stations, including a
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one hour discussion round about "securing your digital home - privacy in the
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internet". You find all the interviews on <a
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href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/Audio#A2013">FSFE's audio page</a>.</li>
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<li>Joinup reports that the <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/valencia-region-government-completes-switch-libreoffice">Valencia
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region government (Spain) completed a switch to LibreOffice on all of the
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120,000 desktop PCs</a> of the administration, including schools and
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courts. They also published a summary about <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/ministries-france-detail-use-and-plans-free-software">France's
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detailed use and plans for free software</a>.</li>
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<li>DRM: Loosing all your e-books by going to Singapur? <a
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href="http://listserv.crl.edu/wa.exe?A2=LIBLICENSE-L;1e13597c.1308">Jim
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O'Donnell describes how that happened to him</a>. To prevent that you can
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buy <a href="http://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/ebooks">DRM-free
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books</a>.</li>
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<li>Besides, David Wheeler suggests to adopt the Free Software principles to IT
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security. For the name he suggests <a
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href="http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2013/08/21/#open-security">Open
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security</a>, </li>
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<li>and the Ada initiative published a <a
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href="http://adainitiative.org/2013/08/conference-anti-harassment-campaigns-do-work-three-existence-proofs-from-sff-atheismskepticism-and-open-source/#floss">history
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of anti-harassment policies in the Free Software community</a>. As it is
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not mentioned in the article: For this year's libreplanet conference our
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sister organisation also had <a
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href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Anti-harassment_policy">anti harassment
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policy</a>.</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>Paul Boddie <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=372">commented
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the article Licensing in a Post Copyright World to clarify some
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points</a>, bringing some of the missing facts to the table.</li>
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<li>On privacy: <a href="http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/geoclue2">Henri Bergius
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wrote about GeoClue2</a>, which offers better privacy controls than its
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predecessor. The previous version of the library would provide the current
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location to any application; with GeoClue2, GNOME will require the user to
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confirm location requests from each application.</li>
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<li>Karl Beecher wrote about <a
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href="http://computerfloss.com/2013/08/os-alternatives/">Free Software
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alternatives for the post-PRISM era</a>, suggesting GNU/Linux as
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operating system, Kolab for e-mail, owncloud for storage. But he is looking
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for VoIP solutions. </li>
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<li>Valentin Rusu <a href="http://www.rusu.info/wp/?p=248">wrote a GnuPG
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backend for the KDE's password manager KDE Wallet</a>, and</li>
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<li>in <a
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href="http://computerfloss.com/2013/08/bruce-schneier-and-the-lords-of-the-cloud/">
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"Bruce Schneier and the Lords of the Cloud"</a>, Karl Beecher summarises
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a talk by the crypto expert.</li>
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<li>Lucile was at the OHM festival. In her summary of the event she came to
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the conclusion <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/lucile.falg/2013/08/07/ohm/"> that advice to
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activists, whose safety depends on digital security, is very
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complicated</a>.</li>
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<li>Guido Arnold found a nice <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2013/08/free-software-journalism-and-democracy/">quote
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which says that Free Software shares the values that underlie journalism
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and democracy</a>, and </li>
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<li>reports that the Fellowship group in Rhein-Main area <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2013/08/fellowship-treffen-in-rheinmain-%E2%80%93-ein-experiment/">
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tries another tactic to spread out (German)</a>.</li>
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<li>Kevin wrote about the connection between his new bass strings and Free
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Software. <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/the_unconventional/2013/08/24/the-connection-between-my-new-bass-strings-and-free-software/">
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Read about this connection and why this bass company moved away from
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Microsoft</a>.</li>
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<li>If you want to <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gollo/2013/08/22/tracking-for-freedom-climbing-the-hills-from-the-other-side">help
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raise Martin Gollowitzer's motivation, support his health, and support
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Free Software all at once</a>, please donate to FSFE using "Tracking for
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Freedom" as the payment reference.</li>
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<li>On technical topics: Sam Tuke explains how to <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=599">achieve reverse reverb
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(echo) effect with GNU/Linux audio plugins</a>, </li>
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<li>Isabel Drost <a href="
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http://blog.isabel-drost.de/index.php/archives/490/wonder-if-you-should-switch-from-your-rdbms-to-apache-hadoop-dont">
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recommends not to switch from RDBMS to Apache Hadoop</a>, and </li>
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<li>"IRL" is <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/irl/2013/08/07/dreaming-of-a-secure-browser/">
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dreaming of a secure browser</a>.</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get active: Tell us which company benefits from Free Software!</h2>
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<p>As a non-profit organisation depending on donations, FSFE constantly has to
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ask people to actually donate. Although more and more of FSFE's budget comes
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from its <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">supporting members -- the Fellows</a>
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-- FSFE also receives donations from several companies. Most of them
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extensively use or write Free Software, use Free Software as a basis for their
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business models, or want to enable social change.</p>
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<p>Do you know a company which benefits a lot from Free Software and which is
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not <a href="/donate/thankgnus.html">yet donating to us</a>? If so please send
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<a href="mailto:contact@fsfe.org">us an e-mail</a> with the company's
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name, if possible a contact name, e-mail, phone number, and a short note how
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they benefit from Free Software or FSFE's work. This way we are able to contact
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them and secure our funding.</p>
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<p>Thanks to all the <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">Fellows</a> and
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<a href="/donate/thankgnus.html">donors</a> who enable our work,<br/>
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<a href="/about/people/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="/index.html">FSFE</a></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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</tags>
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</html>
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