From press at fsfeurope.org Tue Oct 3 09:56:05 2006 From: press at fsfeurope.org (Joachim Jakobs) Date: Tue Oct 3 09:56:06 2006 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] DRM.info: Informing about the dangers of controlling private media use Message-ID: <200610030956.06153.press@fsfeurope.org> DRM.info: Informing about the dangers of controlling private media use Early this morning, a group of contributing organisations and authors launched DRM.info, [1] a collaborative information platform about the potential dangers of Digital Restriction Management (DRM) initiated by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). "'Your devices don't trust you!' is the basic message of DRM. In fact they trust you so little that they will not even tell you that they put you under surveillance," says Joachim Jakobs, FSFE's media coordinator. "The SONY rootkit case has shown that software was secretly installed without the users consent, reported back to SONY, and even damaged the Windows installation when being removed." [2] Given the political implications of putting the owners of computers, media players, mobile phones and other devices under the control of the vendors of the devices, it is no wonder people would prefer if noone knew of DRM: A Disney executive told the 'Economist' [3] one year ago: "If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed." In contrast, DRM.info is based on the idea that people should be informed and involved in decisions that will affect them on a very personal level. "DRM technologies are based on the principle that a third party has more influence over your devices than you, and that their interests will override yours when they come in conflict. That is even true where your interest is perfectly legitimate and legal, and possibly also for your own data," explains Georg Greve, FSFE's president. Libraries are also concerned about the impact of DRM on their ability to ? preserve our cultural heritage, to provide future access to public domain material and to exercise user priviledges under copyright law. "Libraries see DRM as a threat to our activities because it can undermine or even prevent legitimate access to and use of digital content", said Teresa Hackett, eIFL.net. "We welcome DRM.info as a platform for public debate on these important issues for society". Georg Greve finishes: "DRM.info is about to end the silence on DRM and you can help us with that task: Download a DRM.info web button today and link to it." [4] [1] http://drm.info [2] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/sonys_drm_rootk.html [3] http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4342418 [4] http://drm.info/artworks/drm-button About DRM.info DRM.info is a collaboration between several independent organisations and individuals. The views expressed reflect those of the organisation in question and, unless otherwise stated, are not made on behalf of the other contributors. All the contributors have a shared concern about the lack of an informed social debate on issues surrounding DRM technologies. Contributors: Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech) Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFI) Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL.net) Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) iCommons (iCommons) International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) netzpolitik.org (netzpolitik.org) and independent author Cory Doctorow. DRM.info media partners: Linux Magazine Brasil, Brazil Linux Magazine Espana, Spain PC World.cz, Czech Punto Informatico, Italy: "DRM is a crucial issue when we look at the effects of those technologies on innovation and freedom of access. Punto Informatico believes that any such issue as DRM, which is already producing an outstanding impact on the development of the Information Society, must be put on the table of a large and partecipated debate. Our mission after more than ten years is still to contribute to inform Italian Internet users about the chances each one of us has in order to play a role in the shaping of our digital future" Paolo De Andreis, Punto Informatico main editor VNU Business Publications Deutschland, Germany "VNU germany is going to join the DRM info-campaign as we have experienced in the past and strongly believe that DRM is not adding value to our business, benefitting our customers or creating new opportunities on the marketplace." Christian Miessner, Associate Publisher Online About the Free Software Foundation Europe: The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a charitable non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. Therefore the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition- allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. The FSFE was founded in 2001 as the European sister organisation of the Free Software Foundation in the United States. Further information: http://fsfeurope.org -- Joachim Jakobs 1. Regional and international Fellowship meetings 2. FSFE at the Wizards of OS in Berlin 3. Georg Greve at SERCI workshop in Helsinki, Finland 4. FSFE at WIPO General Assembly 5. Other public appearances 1. Regional and international Fellowship meetings Regional Fellowship meetings become more and more regular: in Vienna, where the fourth Austrian Fellowship meeting took place, the attendants decided to move from bi-monthly to monthly meetings. In D?sseldorf, the first Fellowship meeting in the Ruhr area was organised, and more will follow. At the same time, preparations for the first international Fellowship meeting in Bolzano are getting up to speed. http://fsfe.org/events/first_meeting_of_fellows 2. FSFE at the Wizards of OS in Berlin The Free Software Foundation Europe participated at Wizards of OS 4 from 14 to 16 September in Berlin, Germany. A team of 12 people - members of the FSFE and volunteers - helped to staff the booth and informed intersted people about Free Software related issues. During the conference Bernhard Reiter gave an interview about Free Software in general, Free Software in education, science and public, administration, software patents, Free Software buisness models, Digital Restriction Management (DRM), and the work of FSFE. The interview is available online in German. http://netzpolitik.org/2006/netzpolitik-podcast-mit-bernhard-reiter-zu-freier-software/ Georg Greve, also gave several interviews. One about Free Software as a cultural technique, how you can help Free Software, and other things is also available online in German. http://netzpolitik.org/2006/netzpolitik-podcast-mit-georg-greve-von-der-fsfe/ On Friday, Ciaran O'Riordan and Georg Greve held the GPLv3 Workshop in which they informed about current issues and how people can participate in the process. http://www.wizards-of-os.org/index.php?id=2871 On Saturday Matthias Kirschner participated in the "Show of Free Knowledge" where he explained Free Software using the cooking recipe analogy. http://www.wizards-of-os.org/index.php?id=2819&L= (German) 3. Georg Greve at SERCI workshop in Helsinki, Finland FSFE president Georg Greve was invited to participate in a workshop of the Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues (SERCI) about the question of software copyright and patents. As one of the speakers in a policy panel with participants from Nokia, Microsoft and FFII, Georg Greve answered issues on political aspects of software freedom and the Microsoft antitrust case. A short summary can be found in his blog at http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/piracy_redefined_and_other_gems_from_helsinki 4. FSFE at WIPO General Assembly End of September was the General Assembly of the WIPO, UN's body for Copyrights, Patents and related issues. This year's assembly had two very contentious to deal with: The future of the Development Agenda to reform WIPO and the potential Broadcasting Treaty. As FSFE president Georg Greve reported on Thursday of the WIPO GA, both seem to evolve in ways that look much better than they could have: http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/wipo_general_assembly_broadcasting_treaty_development_agenda_and_better_ngo_participation 5. Other public appearances Rainer Kersten, Bernhard Reiter, and Werner Koch represented the FSFE at an event called "come2linux" in Essen, Germany, where they had some interesting conversations with people insterested in the background of Free Software. Patrick Ohnewein and Reinhard M?ller both held a keynote at a Free Software event in Hall/Tirol, Austria, called "Tiroler Linuxtag". Patrick spoke about CoCOS, a competence center for Free Software, and about Free Software in Southern Tyrol. Reinhard gave a general overview on Free Software and informed about the Fellowship. At this year's annual KDE conference in Dublin, Ireland, Ciar?n O'Riordan delivered a keynote on software patents and led a Birds of Feather session on GPLv3. You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html From press at fsfeurope.org Mon Nov 13 01:04:19 2006 From: press at fsfeurope.org (Free Software Foundation Europe) Date: Mon Nov 13 01:04:44 2006 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] FSFE Launching Freedom Task Force, Co-operating with gpl-violations.org Message-ID: FSFE Launching Freedom Task Force, Co-operating with gpl-violations.org FTF to educate programmers and corporations on how to avoid licensing problems, as well as enforce Free Software licences The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) announced today the launch of the Freedom Task Force, [1] thanks to a grant of EUR 30.000 from Stichting NLnet. The organisation, working closely with Harald Welte of gpl-violations.org [2], seeks to help programmers properly set up and organise projects legally, as well as educate companies to understand how the GPL works. As needed, the purpose of the group will also include enforcement in the case of licence violations. FTF is located in FSFE's offices in Zurich, Switzerland. "Free Software itself has become commercial mainstream, but knowledge about Free Software and in particular its licences is often lagging behind," explains Georg Greve, FSFE's president. "With large companies like SUN embracing Free Software at the heart of their business, the software ecosystem is transforming in ways that underline the requirement for services like the FTF." FTF will include experts with technical and legal backgrounds as well as volunteers, working together to provide organised and co-ordinated responses to individual cases where there may be misunderstandings about what a licence requires or a violation of its terms. FSFE has hired Mr. Shane Coughlan to serve as FTF Co-ordinator. Shane Coughlan on the other tasks of the FTF: "We seek to give commercial and non-commercial Free Software developers the maximum support possible with our fiduciary activities. By helping them bundle their legal interests, we are able to safeguard the legal status of a project while it can focus on technological and managerial issues. For projects that FSFE has accepted into its fiduciary program, FSFE will also be in a position to defend their interests in the eventuality of licence violation." Harald Welte, the first person who enforced the GNU GPL in court, will be working closely with the FTF: "My gpl-violations.org work has shown how much the community needs a more focussed approach to deal with these violations. While there was good contact with FSFE in the past, we will now be working closely together, sharing our information and resources to best protect the rights of Free Software developers." "We have as a primary goal to help corporations to adhere to the licences from the onset, rather than to have to enforce violations later," explains Mr. Coughlan. "We encourage those responsible for compliance for their company to contact us, so we can work together to avoid licence compliance problems, rather than having to later solve problems that could have been avoided in the first place." Stichting NLnet [3] Chairman Teus Hagen expressed pleasure at the launch of FTF: "We are very happy to support the launch of the FTF because in our view this is a timely and necessary step to consolidate Free Software. We ourselves at times felt the need for a reliable partner to handle these issues, and in our experience the FSFE is such a partner. We hope that many others will contribute to and support this effort, and see the FTF as an important step in the maturing of Free Software." [1] http://fsfeurope.org/ftf [2] http://gpl-violations.org [3] http://www.nlnet.nl About the Free Software Foundation Europe: The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and involved in many global activities. Access to software determines participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study, modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. Further information: http://fsfeurope.org About gpl-violations.org: In the past 30 months, gpl-violations.org has helped uncover and negotiate more than 100 GPL violations and has obtained numerous out-of-court settlement agreements. The gpl-violations.org project is a not-for-profit effort to bring commercial users and vendors of Free Software into compliance with the licence conditions as set forth by the original authors. The project was founded and is managed by Mr. Harald Welte, a Linux Kernel developer and Free Software enthusiast. For more information on the project, its mission, milestones and goals, please see http://gpl-violations.org Contact: Free Software Foundation Europe Belgium: +32 2 747 03 57 Switzerland: +41 43 500 03 66 UK: +44 29 200 08 17 7 Germany: +49 700 373 38 76 73 Shane Coughlan, FTF Co-ordinator, FSFE extension: 408 Joachim Jakobs, Media Relations, FSFE extension: 404 mobile: +49-179-6919565 From press at fsfeurope.org Mon Nov 13 20:42:15 2006 From: press at fsfeurope.org (Free Software Foundation Europe) Date: Mon Nov 13 20:38:45 2006 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] FSFE Newsletter Message-ID: 1. DRM.info platform launched 2. Introducing Shane M. Coughlan and Maria Luisa Carli 3. FSFE helped liberating Italian ZIP code database 4. FSFE at LWE fairs in Utrecht (Netherlands) and London (UK) 5. FSFE Swedish Team at the Internet Days in Stockholm (Sweden) 1. DRM.info platform launched Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology affect all users of digital technology. At the same time, there is an almost total lack of critical dialog. To address this issue, FSFE has contacted multiple organisations from various areas, such as consumer rights, libraries, digital rights and Creative Commons, and jointly started the DRM.info platform to provide the critical view that is currently missing. Accompanying the launch, FSFE organised protests in various cities, including Z?rich and Gothenburg, to inform people about the problem that in order for DRM to work, they need to be at least partially disowned of the devices they bought, surrendering control over them to third parties. The platform, which also contains pictures from the protests, can be found online at http://DRM.info/ Please help FSFE and its collaborators on DRM.info to spread the information, link to DRM.info and point others to it! 2. Introducing Shane M. Coughlan and Maria Luisa Carli Shane Martin Coughlan has started to work for FSFE full time as a project coordinator. Shane was born in Dublin City and moved to England for higher education. He graduated 2003 in Birmingham with an MA in International Studies (Globalisation and Governance). He joined FSFE because he believes ICT needs to be available to society at large, and he thinks FSFE is in an excellent position to work towards this goal. Maria Luisa Carli works as an intern for FSFE from October 2006 to June 2007. Marilu was born in Foligno, Italy. She gradueted 2004 in businness law and did an MBA at University of Perugia. Marilu joined to FSFE because she was impressed by the enthusiasm that drives the organization and by the international and motivated team. Both work together with FSFE president Georg Greve in FSFE's new office in Z?rich, Switzerland, which has been set up as the third operational base after D?sseldorf and Gothenburg. 3. FSFE helps liberating Italian ZIP code database As soon as the ZIP codes have been updated by the private company Poste Italiane, the official list of codes distributed as compressed text file has disappeared from the websites of Poste Italiane and of the Ministry of Communication. Such text file was used to develop Free Software useful in many commercial environments. Poste Italiane made available the ZIP codes only with proprietary software and proprietary formats (even encrypted) running only on one operating system or via a web search form. As ZIP codes are public data under Italian laws, FSFE's Italian Team helped the developers of Free Software providing legal expertise and protection to rebuild the list of codes using a crawler. FSFE also promoted an open letter to the Minister of Communication asking to release the list of ZIP codes as before. http://www.italy.fsfeurope.org/it/projects/cap/ 4. FSFE at LWE fairs in Utrecht (Netherlands) and London (UK) During the 2006 LWE in Utrecht, FSFE president Georg Greve presented the strategic value of Free Software in business as part of a Free Software masterclass in collaboration with Harald Welte. The show also served to present and promote to the public the "Scientific Education and Learning in Freedom" (SELF) project. FSFE's Gareth Bowker and Rainer Kersten were in London, manning a booth at the LinuxWorld Expo on 25-26th of October. The show itself was very successful, raising a significant amount of awareness about the work FSFE do in Europe - as well as outfitting the UK masses in FSFE's latest fashions! Thanks must also go to Richard Smedley and Simon Morris for helping out on the booth. 5. FSFE Swedish Team at the Internet Days in Stockholm (Sweden) During the last week of October, the Swedish II Foundation held their annual Internet Days in Stockholm, where the FSFE participated with its Swedish team. Besides having a booth with information about our activities, FSFE vice president Jonas ?berg also participated in a panel debate on open document formats. The Swedish Team of the FSFE was also there as one of the recipients of the II Foundation stipends that are given out during the Internet Days each year. The stipend was given to the Swedish Team to complement the activities of the SELF project in Sweden, in particular to work with schools in Sweden to give educations based on SELF material and make more material from SELF available in Swedish. Henrik Sandklef from the FSFE also received a stipend from the II Foundation. His work will focus on translations of manuals and other documents for GnuPG into Swedish. You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html From press at fsfeurope.org Tue Nov 21 13:21:18 2006 From: press at fsfeurope.org (Joachim Jakobs) Date: Tue Nov 21 13:22:18 2006 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the Bacula Project Message-ID: <200611211321.18344.press@fsfeurope.org> FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the Bacula Project The Bacula Project has became the first signatory of the Fiduciary licence Agreement (FLA), a copyright assignment that allows FSFE to become the legal guardian of projects. Kern Sibbald, the founder and lead developer of the Bacula network backup solution, assigned his copyright to FSFE. "I wanted to underline the commitment of the Bacula Project to Free Software," said Kern. "Bacula has always been a community project and we're just solidifying that for the long-term. I am very thankful that the FSFE is providing this service because it removes an important administrative burden from the project, which allows us to focus on the task of programming." The Bacula Project will be protected by FSFEs Freedom Task Force (FTF). Shane Coughlan, FTF Coordinator, explains "The FTF is committed to making projects more secure. The Fiduciary licence Agreement is one part of this. We want to allow developers to focus on their core work. That's why we are taking care of the legal side of things while Kern continues making a fantastic network backup system." "We are delighted to help Bacula accomplish its full potential. The Free Software ecosystem is maturing rapidly these days and the Freedom Task Force with its Fiduciary Licence Agreement, licensing education, licensing advice and enforcement services is an important part in this," explains FSFE president Georg Greve. He adds: "We very much thank Stichting NLnet for doing their part in making this possible, and hope that others will step up to likewise support this effort." Shane Coughlan summarises "our mission is to help individuals, projects and businesses who develop and use Free Software. The Bacula assignment is the first step in our larger fiduciary programme. We are looking forward to welcoming other projects on board." The Freedom Task Force can be found at http://www.fsfeurope.org/ftf The Freedom Task Force can be emailed at ftf@roundup.fsfeurope.org About the Bacula Project: Bacula is a set of computer programs that permit people to manage backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds. The Bacula Project is managed and coordinated by Kern Sibbald. Further information: http://bacula.org Contact: Free Software Foundation Europe Belgium: +32 2 747 03 57 Switzerland: +41 43 500 03 66 UK: +44 29 200 08 17 7 Germany: +49 700 373 38 76 73 Shane Coughlan, FTF Co-ordinator, FSFE extension: 408 Joachim Jakobs, Media Relations, FSFE extension: 404 mobile: +49-179-6919565 If you want to subscribe to this mailing list you can do so at http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release About the Free Software Foundation Europe: The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and involved in many global activities. Access to software determines participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study, modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. Further information: http://fsfeurope.org Get active, protect your freedom by joining the Fellowship of FSFE at http://www.fsfe.org/join From press at fsfeurope.org Mon Dec 11 21:56:39 2006 From: press at fsfeurope.org (Free Software Foundation Europe) Date: Mon Dec 11 22:00:42 2006 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] FSFE Newsletter Message-ID: 1. First international Fellowship conference 2. Freedom Task Force started 3. FSFE becomes the legal guardian of Bacula.org 4. Inaugural meeting of the Internet Governance Forum 5. Fifth international GPLv3 conference 6. Trophees du Libre 7. Introducing Mathias Klang 8. FSFE at public events 9. Get Active: tell your company about FSFE! 1. First international Fellowship conference More than 40 Fellows from all over Europe came together at the first international Fellowship conference in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy. The main disuccion topics were the advocacy project, the Fellowship web page, the new logo of the FSFE, and heads-up information on the Freedom Task Force. Besides that, the Fellows and the members of the FSFE core team used the opportunity to meet each other in person and talk about various topics in smaller groups. 2. Freedom Task Force started After years of planning, FSFE was finally able to announce its most recent activity, the Freedom Task Force (FTF). The FTF will help projects and companies to ensure legal maintainability of their Free Software through three main areas of activity: licensing education, fiduciary services, and - when necessary - enforcement of Free Software licenses. The FTF provides a point of reference and contact for all these issues and is being coordinated by Shane M. Coughlan, who is working closely with similar projects, such as Harald Welte of gpl-violations.org. The startup of the Freedom Task Force was made possible by a contribution of EUR 30.000,- by Stichting NLnet. FSFE thanks NLnet for their support and encourages others to contribute to secure these activities in the long term; you can lend a hand through volunteer engagement, financial contributions, and participation in the Fellowship. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2006q4/000159.html http://fsfeurope.org/ftf/ 3. FSFE becomes the legal guardian of Bacula.org The first project to make use of FSFE's Freedom Task Force and its fiduciary services is Bacula.org, arguably the most advanced Free Software backup solution currently available. Using the Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) of FSFE, Bacula.org has made FSFE the fiduciary of its legal interests to ensure the long-term freedom of the project, helping the Bacula.org project to further mature and focus on its technical and project coordination. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2006q4/000161.html 4. Inaugural meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) FSFE was very involved in the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), in which FSFE president Georg Greve co-coordinated the global Civil Society work on Free Software, Open Standards and knowledge regulation issues. One of the outcomes of the WSIS is the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF), an open, inclusive, multi-stakeholder dialog forum for future policies of internet use and regulation. To ensure that such dialogs and global policy trends include the Free Software perspective, FSFE will be following the IGF, which held its inaugurational meeting in Athens. FSFE president Georg Greve brought Free Software issues to the table in one of the main-room panels as well as participated in the launch of the Dynamic Coalitions on Open Standards and Access to Knowledge and Freedom of Expression. http://fsfeurope.org/projects/igf/ 5. Fifth international GPLv3 conference The fifth international GPLv3 conference took place in Tokyo, Japan, and was hosted by FSFE's associate organsiation, the Free Software Initiative Japan (FSIJ). Georg Greve and Ciaran O'Riordan represented the FSFE at the event, which is expected to be the last international GPLv3 conference before the release of the final version of the GPLv3 in spring next year. http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/tokyo-rms-transcript.en.html http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/tokyo-ciaran-transcript.en.html 6. Trophees du Libre Organised by the Cente Europ?en de Transfert et de Recherche en Informatique Libre (CETRIL), the 3rd edition of the Trophees du Libre was held in Soissons, France. To express FSFE's support for this way of encouraging and endorsing Free Software projects, FSFE president Georg Greve participated in the jury and had many interesting conversations with other people of the Free Software community. 7. Introducing Mathias Klang Mathias Klang joined the core team of FSFE, strengthening the Swedish team. Mathias is a researcher in legal informatics at the University of G?teborg in Sweden. He studied law in G?teborg and later specialised in IT law at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. His research interests and publications lie primarily in the areas of the law & technology in connection with topics such as democracy, human rights, free expression, censorship, free software, open access and ethics. He has published many research articles in addition to co-editing (with Andrew Murray) a work entitled "Human Rights in the Digital Age" (2005), written (and successfully defended) his doctoral dissertation "Disruptive Technology: Effects of Technology Regulation on Democracy" (2006). 8. FSFE at public events Many core team members of the FSFE were present at the South Tyrolean Free Software Conference (SFScon) in Bolzano, Italy. Georg Greve presented the Free Software Foundation Europe, Jonas ?berg talked about the SELF project, Stefano Maffulli held a speech about the Fellowship of FSFE, and Werner Koch did an Introduction in encryption technologies and a Workshop on GnuPG und the Fellowship Crypto-Card. The FSFE also wants to thank the organisers of the event for also hosting the first international Fellowship conference after the official end of the actual SFScon. Michael Kallas, Rainer Kersten and G?ven Bay organised a booth at the LWE in Cologne, Germany, where they had a number of interesting conversations and informed people about the work of the FSFE. Jonas ?berg gave a talk on SELF and the GPLv3 at the Update computer club of the Uppsala University in Sweden. Shane Coughlan spoke at a meeting in central Zurich organised by "Nexell Informiert" on Wednesday, November 29th.? He introduced the concept of Free Software and explained how the Freedom Task Force (FTF) can help businesses understand Free Software licensing.? The reaction from Nexell customers was very positive, many of whom are considering the adoption of Free Software solutions over the coming year. 9. Get Active: tell your company about FSFE! From bogus@does.not.exist.com Thu Dec 7 12:05:21 2006 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Mon Dec 11 22:00:43 2006 Subject: No subject Message-ID: contribute to the Free Software movement and to the work of the Free Software Foundation Europe. Spreading the word about Free Software has always been a key activity of the FSFE, and everybody can help with this, even in his daily environment: * Inform the decision makers in your company about the idea of Free Software, or try to bring them to Free Software events. * Inform them about FSFE's work and why it matters to them. * If you think that your company could benefit from legal education around Free Software, point them to the Freedom Task Force. * Encourage them to do more to ensure freedom in the digital age by donating to the Free Software Foundation Europe. You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html From bogus@does.not.exist.com Thu Dec 7 12:05:21 2006 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue Jan 30 11:19:03 2007 Subject: No subject Message-ID: industry a hitherto unprecedented power over anything consumers do with their devices and arbitrarily decide and change what the user may do with the digital information at her disposal, completely bypassing national or international laws. FSFE vice president Jonas Ã\u2013berg explains: "While DRM is a separate issue in some regards, it's important to realise that the media channel providers are pushing for DRM primarily in proprietary software. This is because they know that with proprietary software, the user has no control over it, and there is no way to restore his or her legitimate rights. When using Free Software, the user can change and adapt the software, or have someone do it, thereby bypassing the most unacceptable restrictions. So it is no wonder that the industry is pushing for products such as Microsoft Vista and other proprietary software: it gives them more control over what the user can do." All of these aspects should be taken into account when looking forward. The COSPA-project, funded by the European Union, considers it an advantage remain "independent of software vendors". And even more importantly, it highlights the fact that Free Software leads to the creation of new software businesses and one step towards reaching the European Union Lisbon goals of making Europe the most competitive knowledge economy by 2010. FSFE considers this a unique opportunity: With the release of Vista, users will need to upgrade to a new operating system that will feel different and require some time to get used to its functionality. The same is true for any modern GNU/Linux distribution. It is about the same investment in effort, but it will give you control over your own data. About the Free Software Foundation Europe: The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and involved in many global activities. Access to software determines participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study, modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. Contact: Free Software Foundation Europe Belgium: +32 2 747 03 57 Switzerland: +41 43 500 03 66 UK: +44 29 200 08 17 7 Germany: +49 700 373 38 76 73 Shane Coughlan, FTF Co-ordinator, FSFE extension: 408 Joachim Jakobs, Media Relations, FSFE extension: 404 mobile: +49-179-6919565 Further information: http://fsfeurope.org If you want to subscribe to this mailing list you can do so at http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release Get active, protect your freedom by joining the Fellowship of FSFE at http://www.fsfe.org/join