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219 lines
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
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<html newsdate="2012-09-04" type="newsletter">
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<version>1</version>
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - September 2012</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<h1>FSFE Newsletter - September 2012</h1>
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<h2>Like in the 90s but with phones: First Free Your Android installation parties</h2>
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<p>More and more people start using mobile phones with Android. But in
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order to be in full control over your phone, you have to install another
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Android firmware on them. To make this phone liberation easy we started the <a
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href="http://freeyourandroid.org">Free Your Android campaign</a>.</p>
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<p>In the <a href="/news/nl/nl-201208.html">last newsletter
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edition</a> we asked you in our "Get active" section to help us with Free
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Your Android installation parties, like the GNU/Linux installation parties
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some years ago. Thanks to all of you, who contacted us about it, and who
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offered their help for the future.</p>
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<p>This month some of us already started with those installation parties.
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First, Torsten Grote taught Erik Albers and your editor how to free their
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phones, which is <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=981">documented quick and
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dirty</a> on your editors weblog. Second, on August 26th, 13 people from
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Austria, France, Germany, Slovenia, and Spain participated at FSFE's workshop.
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To <a href="http://silkemeyer.net/workshop-free-your-android">summarise it in
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the words of Silke Meyer</a>, one of the trainers: "The workshop had two
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goals: To help people install free software on their phones and to
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develop/document some guidelines that trainers for such workshops could use."
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Result: We liberated 4 phones, updated 3 to a newer version, documented what we
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did including <a href="https://wiki.fsfe.org/Android/Workshop">our internal
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workshop documentation</a>, and thought about stickers for liberated phones.
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Beside <a href="http://silkemeyer.net/workshop-free-your-android">Silke's blog
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post</a>, there is also a <a
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href="http://abriraqui.net/2012/08/27/liberando-el-android-de-un-htc-desire/">Spanish
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article with instructions</a>, and <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=1000">this article including some pictures
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of happy participants</a>.</p>
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<p>We will have other Free Your Android workshops on 4th September in
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Katowice/Poland, on 9th September Pristina/Kosovo, and on 15th September in
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Berlin/Germany, Paris/France, and Ljubljana/Slovenia. The campaign team's goal
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is also to make the update process easier. There is the Free Software "OTA
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Update Center" which can achieve easy updates, but as Torsten <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2012/08/26/updating-custom-versions-of-android-easily/">explains,
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there are still some problems with it</a>. Perhaps you, or someone you know
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can help with it?</p>
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<h2>Standardisation Absurdity: Still No OOXML</h2>
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<p>Office suites have one of the strongest network effects: it is often
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difficult to use another word processor than Microsoft Word. If something does
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not work, you as a Free Software user are blamed by the others when the
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document exchange is not working. So one of the reasons, why we are <a
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href="/freesoftware/standards/standards.html">promoting Open Standards</a> is to make it
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possible for Free Software users to communicate with others, who are using
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non-free software.</p>
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<p>Because most decision-makers now understand, that <a
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href="/freesoftware/standards/def.html">Open Standards</a> are crucial for a fair
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market, Microsoft pushed its own standard called Microsoft Office Open XML
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(OOXML), claiming it is an Open Standard. FSFE <a
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href="/activities/msooxml/msooxml-questions.html">questioned the ISO
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certification</a> starting in 2007, and when ISO approved it we <a
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href="https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/press-release/2008q2/000206.html">were
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concerned about the quality of standardisation process</a>.</p>
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<p>Recently Microsoft <a
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href="http://blogs.office.com/b/office-next/archive/2012/08/13/the-new-office-expands-file-format-options.aspx">announced</a>
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that the next edition of Microsoft Office 2013, will support the OOXML document
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standard. <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2012/08/16/microsoft-to-finally-support-ooxml-odf-1-2/">Karsten
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Gerloff is analysing</a> this public admission by Microsoft that they have
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not implemented OOXML until now – despite everything their sales people have
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apparently been telling clients in business and the public sector.</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>Software patents and rounded rectangles: Samsung should pay more than a
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billion US dollars in damages for Apple. Karsten Gerloff takes a look <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2012/08/28/apple-vs-samsung-does-it-matter/">if
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this decision matters</a> (<a
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href="https://netzpolitik.org/2012/apple-vs-samsung-meilenstein-oder-schlagloch/">German
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version on netzpolitik</a>).</li>
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<li>Digital Restrictions Management: For the visitors of the Consumer
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Electronics Unlimited (IFA), FSFE's German team together with "Digitale
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Gesellschaft e.V." has published <a href="/news/2012/news-20120831-01.html">a
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German DRM booklet</a>, based on the <a
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href="http://www.edri.org/files/2012EDRiPapers/DRM.pdf">one we made
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together with EDRi (PDF)</a>. Our sister organisation <a
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href="http://www.defectivebydesign.org/node/2243">published a "DRM-Free"
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label</a>, and there are offers to get DRM-free ebooks and music in <a
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href="http://www.defectivebydesign.org/node/2244">pay-what-you-want
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bundles</a>!</li>
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<li>Wistleblower software published as Free Software: The weekly German
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newspaper <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=978">"Die Zeit" published a
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whistleblower program, as Free Software</a>. Now security experts have the
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opportunity to analyse the software, and improve it to provide good technology
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for more transparency.</li>
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<li>Free Software in your holiday destination: Joinup reports, that the <a
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href="https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/canary-islands-government-increasing-and-encouraging-open-source-use">
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Canary Islands' government is increasing and encouraging Free Software
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use</a>, especially for their telephone system and their office suite. They
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expect 25% reduction of non-free software license costs.</li>
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<li>Not directly connected with Free Software, but <a
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href="/news/2011/news-20110301-01.html">Fellowship representative</a> and
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former <a href="/contribute/internship.html">FSFE intern</a> Hugo Roy is all
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over the news with his project <a href="http://tos-dr.info/">"Terms of
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Service - Didn't Read"</a>, e.g. <a
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href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/15/tos-dr-website">Wired</a>,
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<a
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href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/13/putting-an-end-to-the-biggest-lie-on-the-internet/">Techcrunch</a>,
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<a
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href="http://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2012-08/terms-of-service-did-not-read">Die
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Zeit</a>, <a
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href="http://moneyland.time.com/2012/08/10/new-site-grades-those-pesky-terms-of-service-agreements-you-never-read/">Time</a>,
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<a
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href="http://www.stern.de/digital/online/datenschutz-projekt-die-agb-checker-1881991.html">Stern</a>,
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<a
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href="http://www.welt.de/print/welt_kompakt/webwelt/article108808811/Internet-Kompakt.html">Die
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Welt</a>, <a
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href="http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2012/08/14/un-site-veut-mettre-fin-au-mensonge-des-conditions-d-utilisation-sur-internet_1745942_651865.html">Le
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Monde</a>, and many more. Thanks Hugo for your good work!</li>
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<li>A selection from the <a href="https://planet.fsfe.org">Fellowship blog
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aggregation</a>:</li>
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<ul>
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<li>Clean Your Android: Mark Lindhout is writing about annoying phone
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problems. This time it is fixed by <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/marklindhout/2012/08/htc-desire-hd-keeps-opening-the-locations-app-and-goes-to-speaker-during-phone-calls/">cleaning
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your micro USB port and headphone jack</a>, but this is not as simple as
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it sounds.</li>
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<li>Distributed Free Software: Bdale Garbee <a
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href="http://www.gag.com/bdale/blog/posts/FreedomBox_0.1.html">reports that
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Freedom Box 0.1 was released</a>, and <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/samtuke/?p=401">Sam Tuke wrote about Secure
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Share</a>, which aims to become an ultra-secure social network</li>
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<li>Are you still using paper maps, or are you using map programs on your
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phones (e.g. OSMAnd+)? <a href="http://aligunduz.org/blog/?p=521">Ali
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Gündüz</a> loves old maps, and he wrote about his three old maps from 1764,
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1872, 1859.</li>
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<li>Fellow Number 1, <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=181">Mario Fux
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informs you</a> about the donations for the Free Software meetings in
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Randa. </li>
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<li>One of the rarely bloggers, Mr Rainer "Merchandise" Kersten, wrote <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/rainer/?p=37">a comment about competence, and
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digital dementia (German)</a>.</li>
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<li>On a more technical side: Werner Koch, author of GnuPG and GA member
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writes about <a
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href="http://rem.eifzilla.de/archives/2012/08/17/beta-release-numbering-with-git">beta
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release numbering with GIT</a>, and Myriam Schweingruber asked people to <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/myriam/2012/08/08/triagers-and-testers-needed/">participate
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in a kmail bugsprint</a> which took place on August 18th.</li>
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<li>Do you know <a href="http://www.nyan.cat/">Nyancat</a>? Your editor
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apologises, if you did not want to be reminded about it. But now there is a
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GNU version of it: the <a
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href="http://archive.org/details/M00GNU">MOOGNU</a>, and</li>
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<li>finally, if you are interested in playing ukulele, Guido Arnold, explains
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<a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2012/07/how-i-tuned-my-ukulele/">how he
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tuned his ukulele using Free Software and Wikipedia</a>.</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get Active: Contribute to Free Software news!</h2>
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<p>Your editor always tries to cover important and interesting news about FSFE
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and Free Software. So shameless house advertising: if you read or hear interesting
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Free Software news, please write an e-mail to <a
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href="/about/people/kirschner/kirschner.html">your editor</a>, with a short note why
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this news is particularly interesting or important in your view.</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="/">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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