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231 righe
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<html newsdate="2012-07-04" type="newsletter">
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - July 2012</title>
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<body>
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<h1>FSFE Newsletter - July 2012</h1>
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<h2>"Secure Boot": Who will control your next computer?</h2>
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<p newsteaser="yes">The FSFE's goal is to ensure that the owners of IT devices are always
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in full
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and sole control of them. This fundamental principle is recently being
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challenged. For maintaining sustained growth in the development and use of
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software, the broad availability of general purpose computers is crucial. This
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month the FSFE published <a
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href="/campaigns/generalpurposecomputing/secure-boot-analysis.html">its
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"Secure Boot" analysis</a>.</p>
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<p>We demand that before purchasing a device, buyers must be informed concisely
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about the technical measures implemented in this device, as well as the
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specific usage restrictions and their consequences for the owner.</p>
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<p>Furthermore, we strongly recommend to exclusively purchase IT devices which
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grant their owners full, sole and permanent control over security subsystems
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(e. g. signature-based usage restrictions), in order to maintain the ability to
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install arbitrary software and lastly to retain exclusive control over ones own
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data.</p>
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<h2>European Court of Justice confirms: We are right!</h2>
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<blockquote><p>
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We always said "They are willing to deal with everybody, but those who
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compete with them." Meaning, proposing conditions against Free Software is an
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abuse. Microsoft replied "change your business model to suit our licensing
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scheme and you'll be served", or "Free what? Who the hell are you, what's
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your turnover", or dismissals like this. Apart from annoying, they were
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wrong. (<a href="http://piana.eu/msft_ends">Carlo Piana</a>, who represented
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the FSFE and the Samba Team)</p></blockquote>
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<p>This month the European Court of Justice has ordered Microsoft to finally
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pay a record fine of 860 million euros for using its near-monopoly on the
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desktop to keep rivals out of the workgroup server market.</p>
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<p>Microsoft spent over 3.000.000.000 EUR to buy third parties out of <a
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href="/activities/ms-vs-eu/ms-vs-eu.html">this case</a>. But for a decade, we
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continued to participate in the case, to assert the rights of Free Software
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developers to access interoperability information, especially for the Samba
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Team. Samba is a Free Software to share files and printers in a network
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competing with Microsoft's proprietary product.</p>
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<p><a href="/activities/ms-vs-eu/ms-vs-eu.html">This decision</a> establishes
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that we were right: Receiving the interoperability information was our right as
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Free Software community, not a concession by Microsoft.</p>
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<h2>Spain won the Championship! What about Finland?</h2>
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<p>Interesting times in the European Free Software Championship. <a
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href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2012/07/euro2012-final-spain-vs-norway/">Spain
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won the European Free Software Championship</a> with 4:3 against Norway.
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Thanks to referee <a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/guido">Guido Arnold</a>
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we did
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not receive any reports of fouls during the alternative games. Outside those
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games the FSFE also works on fairness.</p>
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<p>We have started an initiative to advance fair public procurements in
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Finland, to lower the barrier for Free Software in the Finnish public sector.
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The initiative concentrates on IT related procurement notices that require
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brand instead of defining functionality required by the procurer. To date the
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FSFE has skimmed over 300 procurement notices, and of those taken into closer
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analysis, 14 have been found to clearly violate the Finnish procurement law.
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These violating notices explicitly asked for tenders of specific brands of
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software manufacturers or products and thus discriminate all other brands and
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manufacturers, effectively stopping free competition.</p>
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<p>The FSFE contacts the violating authorities and informs them about the
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specific violation the notice contains, <a
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href="/news/2012/news-20120619-01.html">including a six item list of
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recommendations to ensure proper competition</a>.</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>The FSFE's former legal coordinator <a
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href="https://lwn.net/Articles/501490/">Shane Coughlan launched
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OpenRelief</a>. The project is aimed at developing
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inexpensive—"disposable"—drone aircraft to assist relief teams in
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detecting
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people, changes in terrain, smoke, radiation, and other conditions in places
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that may be difficult or dangerous for on-the-ground exploration.</li>
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<li><a
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href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/english/2012/06/02/linuxtag-akademy-2012/">After
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meeting other Fellows at Linuxtag in Berlin</a>, Heiki Ojasild decided to
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hold a <a href="http://pdfreaders.org">PDFreaders</a> sprint at Akademy in
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Tallinn, Estonia. On July 4th <a
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href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/repentinus/english/2012/06/16/fsfe-pdf-readers-sprint-at-akademy-2012/">
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everyone is invited</a> to <a
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href="/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfsprint.html">follow our PDF Readers Sprint
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Guide</a> stopping public bodies from restricting the users' freedom and
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unfairly distorting the competition in favour of certain proprietary software
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makers.</li>
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<li>The FSFE's president <a href="
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http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2012/06/04/common-sense-in-the-basque-country/">Karsten
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Gerloff welcomes</a> the Basque Country's move to introduce a policy that
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software developed with public funds will be released as Free Software by
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default.</li>
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<li>The draft for the UK Communications Bill outlines how civil servants are
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intent on surveilling the internet communications of British citizens. <a
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href="/news/2012/news-20120616-01.html">Sam Tuke</a> wrote about how to use
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Free Software to protect your privacy online, regardless of the measures that
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the Coalition may impose upon you or your telecoms providers.</li>
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<li><b>UPDATE: The European Parliament rejected
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ACTA. (04/07/2012)</b><br />The FSFE has been <a
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href="/news/2012/news-20120607-01.html">asking
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activists across Europe</a> to protest against the Anti-Counterfeiting
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Trade Agreement (ACTA). Our aim is that the European Parliament finally
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rejects this controversial treaty, which would greatly harm citizens'
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rights. The Parliament will hold a plenary vote on ACTA on 4th of July.</li>
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<li>A bit sarcastic: some people are wondering <a
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href="http://blog.crysys.hu/2012/06/stuxnet-duqu-flame-open-source-license-questions-v0/">
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who was violating the GNU GPL with StuxNet</a>.</li>
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<li>And in the upcoming month, the FSFE will be present at the <a
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href="http://2012.rmll.info/">RMLL</a> (Libre Software Meeting) in Geneva,
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and as you can see on <a href="https://fsfe.org/events/">our event page</a>
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Richard Stallman is giving talks in the Czech Republic, Germany, and
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Spain.</li>
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<li>A selection from the <a href="http://planet.fsfe.org">Fellowship blog
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aggregation</a>:</li>
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<ul>
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<li>Fellowship representative <a
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href="http://blog.hugoroy.eu/2012/06/13/facebook-update-their-terms-of-service-but-were-watching-them/">
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Hugo Roy commented on Facebook's updates of the terms of service</a>
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(that is the document most people never read, but everyone agrees to when
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they sign up to services online).</li>
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<li>Mirko Böhm <a
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href="http://www.agile-workers.com/web/2012/06/leadership-strategy-and-qt/">is
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analysing why Nokia is laying off 10.000 employees, including 700 core Qt
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developers?</a></li>
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<li>A Federal US Judge says APIs are not copyrightable. Read more in <a
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href="http://piana.eu/api">Carlo Piana's article</a>, and learn why
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copyright in software is not the same copyright as the one granted to
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literary works.</li>
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<li>Hannes Hauswedell wrote a triology (<a
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href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2012/06/04/a-versatile-open-and-future-proof-audio-setup-part-0/">part
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0</a> <a
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href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2012/06/06/a-versatile-open-and-future-proof-audio-setup-part-1-overview/">part
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1</a>, and <a
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href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/h2/2012/06/14/a-versatile-open-and-future-proof-audio-setup-part-2-storage/">part
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2</a>) about a versatile, open and future-proof audio setup.</li>
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<li>And finally, read why it might somtimes be <a
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href="http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/how-do-i-turn-this-off/">complicated to
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really "try turning it off and on again"?</a>.</li>
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</ul>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get Active: Whom should we ask next?</h2>
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<p>Every time your editor reads <a
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href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews">a Fellowship interview</a>
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he feels proud to work for the FSFE with all those amazing people. Again
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this month
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when <a href="http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=605">Bjarni Runar
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Einarsson was interviewed</a> about PageKite, an application which
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allows the publication of websites stored on personal computers. <a
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href="http://pagekite.net/">PageKite</a> can be combined with other Free
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Software to realise decentralisation.</p>
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<p>Please help Chris Woolfrey and Sam
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Tuke <a href="mailto:editors@fsfeurope.org">by suggesting</a> other Fellows
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for an interview. You can also participate in our <a
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href="/contribute/editors/editors.html">editors team</a> to help
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interviewing people and editing other publications. And finally, if you know
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interesting people in the Free Software community who are not yet Fellows (it
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is hard to believe, but your editor heard rumours they still exist), convince
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them to become a Fellow, so we can make new interesting interviews for
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you.</p>
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<p>Thanks to all the <a href="http://fellowship.fsfe.org/join">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/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a
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href="http://www.fsfe.org">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="http://planet.fsfe.org/en/rss20.xml">Fellowship Blog
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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>newsletter</tag>
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<tag>Matthias Kirschner</tag>
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</tags>
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<timestamp>$Date$ $Author:
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mk $</timestamp>
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</html>
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