From press at fsfeurope.org Fri Jan 12 21:29:32 2007 From: press at fsfeurope.org (Free Software Foundation Europe) Date: Fri Jan 12 21:33:01 2007 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] FSFE Newsletter Message-ID: 1. Looking back and forward 2. Georg Greve at "Nexell informiert" 3. Get Active: Join the Fellowship! 1. Looking back and forward 2006 was an exciting year for the Free Software community and for FSFE. The Free Software Foundation Europe was and is involved in the preparation of the new version of the GPL, the world's most successful Free Software license, in the European Commission's efforts to stop Microsoft abusing their monopoly, in the UN World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the World Intellectual Property Organsiation (WIPO), and the EU funded project for Scientific Education and Learning in Freedom (SELF). Besides that, FSFE has taken the main initiative to launch drm.info, a portal about the dangers of Digital Restriction Management. Probably the most important project for the next year will be the Freedom Task Force (FTF), which will provide licensing education, ficuciary activities and license enforcement in the field of Free Software. 2007 will be an important year for Free Software: With more and more big players (like Sun or Novell) shifting a growing share of their business activity towards Free Software, effects of a single move of one of these players get stronger for both good and bad decisions. The existence of an independent organisation like FSFE that keeps the focus on the long term goals is essential for the Free Software ecosystem to remain balanced. 2. Georg Greve at "Nexell informiert" In Zurich, Georg Greve gave a lecture titled "What is Free Software and are Free Software solutions professional enough for our daily business?" during the "Nexell informiert". "Nexell informiert" is a meeting where experts are invited to talk and spread awareness about Free Software issues, organised by the Nexell, an independent team of international and multilingual CRM professionals. 3. Get Active: Join the Fellowship! The Fellowship of FSFE is a community for digital freedom. Becoming a Fellow is the easiest and most direct way to support the Free Software Foundation Europe and Free Software in general. Fellows contribute in three ways: financially, through the weight they give to the voice of FSFE, and - if they want - through the work they do. To help the Fellows in getting active, FSFE provides some infrastructure for them to meet and coordinate: blogspace on fsfe.org, an email address forwarding, a jabber account, and ad-hoc mailing lists - all available exclusively for the Fellows. However, probably the nicest thing a Fellow gets from FSFE is the personalised OpenPGP conformant crypto card, so each Fellow can protect his freedom and privacy directly and immediately. https://www.fsfe.org You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html From press at fsfeurope.org Tue Jan 23 12:02:38 2007 From: press at fsfeurope.org (Joachim Jakobs) Date: Tue Jan 23 14:24:30 2007 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the OpenSwarm Project In-Reply-To: <200701231058.48061.jj@office.fsfeurope.org> References: <1169218103.92.0.920294622398.issue112@roundup.fsfeurope.org> <200701221428.19154.jj@office.fsfeurope.org> <200701231058.48061.jj@office.fsfeurope.org> Message-ID: <200701231202.38566.press@fsfeurope.org> FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the OpenSwarm Project The OpenSwarm Project has become a signatory of the Fiduciary licence Agreement (FLA), a copyright assignment that allows FSFE to become the legal guardian of projects. Anastasios Hatzis, the developer behind the OpenSwarm model-driven development platform for Python applications, lead the process of assigning copyright to FSFE. "My company - HATZIS Edelstahlbearbeitung GmbH - wanted to foster a development community around the OpenSwarm technology while also underwriting our commitment to Free Software," said Anastasios. "The FLA has provided us with an excellent way to ensure code coherency and a framework for long-term development." The OpenSwarm Project will be protected by FSFE's Freedom Task Force (FTF). Shane Coughlan, FTF Coordinator, explains "The Freedom Task Force is here to help strengthen the legal foundation of the Free Software eco-system. The Fiduciary licence Agreement is part of this. It provides a clear way for projects to consolidate their copyright. In the case of OpenSwarm, FSFE is acting a legal guardian for the project and ensuring that the developers can focus on maturing an exciting development platform." "FSFE is committed to help increase the maturity of the Free Software community, including the legal maintainability of Free Software in the long-term," explains FSFE president Georg Greve. He adds: "The FTF has a specific part to play in this and we would like to thank Stichting NLnet for their support in its launch and initial activities. We hope other groups will also lend support." Shane Coughlan summarises "the FTF mission to help educate individuals, projects and businesses in the advantages of Free Software licences, and to help the use of Free Software licences through fiduciary assignment and legal guardianship. The Bacula project was the first to avail of our fiduciary programme, and OpenSwarm underlines the continued developer interest in this service." The Freedom Task Force can be found at http://www.fsfeurope.org/ftf The Freedom Task Force can be emailed at ftf@fsfeurope.org About the OpenSwarm Project: Development of OpenSwarm has been started at the HATZIS Edelstahlbearbeitung GmbH. HATZIS is a family-owned and med-sized steel-engineering company in Bavaria, Germany, which provides to more than 300 companies construction and production services for highest quality components made of stainless steel. OpenSwarm is planned to be a holistic set of model-driven software development tools focused on the easy creation of powerful and business logic enriched applications in the field of Web- and data-centric solutions for industry, public sector and non-profit organisations. The generated software systems are implemented in Python and data is stored in PostgreSQL databases, so they can be hosted on almost any platform. Further information: http://openswarm.sourceforge.net/ 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 From press at fsfeurope.org Tue Jan 30 11:17:42 2007 From: press at fsfeurope.org (press@fsfeurope.org) Date: Tue Jan 30 11:19:03 2007 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] The Vista message: Upgrade to GNU/Linux now! Message-ID: [immediate release] The Vista message: Upgrade to GNU/Linux now! Microsoft has recently been criticised for some of its decisions regarding its Microsoft Vista operating system, that threaten our fundamental democratic and social values. "Unfortunately, many of the articles and statements about problems with Microsoft Vista are not truly specific to Vista. Very similar problems exist in any proprietary software," says Georg Greve, FSFE's president. "Ever since the first FSF was founded in 1985, the Free Software Foundations have understood and worked against the threats that proprietary software poses to our society." He continues: "Because these dangers are more widely understood today we have seen an unprecedented move to Free Software by governments, users and companies alike in the past years. The more proprietary software makes use of its absolute control over the user, the more people are starting to look for alternatives." The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is encouraging all users of proprietary software to consider all costs and alternatives: Free Software has proven a strong tendency to be more reliable, more secure, and more in line with our democratic and social values. The choice should be easy to make. In 2006, the FSFE launched its Freedom Task Force (FTF), an activity that offers education and services in Free Software licensing, one of the important issues to consider for any government or company investigating a switch to Free Software. The FTF also answer queries, provide training on all levels, and help to implement best practices in all organisations. With a network of legal and technical experts throughout Europe, it's perfectly equipped to deal with these issues on a daily basis. One of the technical issues that the FSFE is working on is freedom from Digital Restriction Management (DRM). This technique gives 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 Jonasu2013berg 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 From press at fsfeurope.org Thu Feb 1 10:46:01 2007 From: press at fsfeurope.org (Joachim Jakobs) Date: Thu Feb 1 10:49:59 2007 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] FSFE releases solution for projects wishing to increase their legal strength In-Reply-To: <1170321784.68.0.111323465434.issue115@roundup.fsfeurope.org> References: <1170321784.68.0.111323465434.issue115@roundup.fsfeurope.org> Message-ID: <200702011046.01398.press@fsfeurope.org> FSFE releases solution to increase legal strength of Free Software projects FSFE releasing the Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation Licence (GFDL) and the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike (CC by-sa) licence. The Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) is a copyright assignment carefully crafted for the specific needs of Free Software projects to bundle their copyright in a single organisation or person. This will enable projects to ensure their legal maintainability, including important issues such as preserving the ability to relicense and certainty to have sufficient rights to enforce licences in court. The FLA is a truly international copyright assignment working in both copyright traditions that was written by Dr. Axel Metzger (ifrOSS) and Georg Greve (FSFE) in consultation with renowned international legal and technical experts. The latest revision was compiled by Georg Greve and FSFE's FTF coordinator Shane M Coughlan based on feedback provided by Dr. Lucie Guibault of the Institute for Information Law in the Netherlands. "The FLA has been carefully formulated to meet the legal requirements of every country and it ensures that assignment or licence granted has the same scope irrespective of the country in which it is signed," says Dr. Lucie Guibault. "This marks a clear step forward in copyright assignment and offers real benefit to the Free Software community." There are two ways the FLA would be used: A project can apply to be accepted into FSFE's Fiduciary Program, examples for this are Bacula.org and OpenSwarm. This has the advantage that the work of handling the legal issues and taking care of licence compliance will be done by FSFE's Freedom Task Force and its large team of technical and legal experts. This allows the project to focus on project management and technical work. The other usage would be to use the FLA and adapt it to assign the rights to another organisation set up by the project team itself. This organisation would then have to take care of the paperwork and licence compliance work itself, but it would still benefit from the solidity of the FLA for the gathering of rights and FSFE's Freedom Task Force will be glad to provide insight and experience to such organisations. "For us the most important issue is not whether projects assign their copyright to FSFE or any other organisation. We just want to do our part so projects do not neglect these issues," explains Georg Greve, president of the FSFE. "Legal maintainability is a key issue for Free Software adoption. We started the Freedom Task Force to help ensure legal maintainability in practice as well as spread knowledge about these issues. Our idea for a healthy Free Software eco-system is to have a healthy and heterogenous infrastructure of organisations that will cooperate with each other to support Free Software in this way." Shane Coughan, coordinator of the Freedom Task Force adds: "Deciding which approach is best for a project depends on many different factors and always boils down to individual circumstances. Ideally, organisations handling these issues should be non-profit and have a clear primary focus on Free Software." "When building such an organisation, it is also important that people pay attention to the possibility of having to withstand organisational attacks from the outside as well as legal battles in court. Not all Free Software projects will want to adopt such hardened structures, which might contradict their technical and project management principles and structures," Mr Coughlan continues. "In that case, the FLA allows FSFE to help safeguard the project in the legal sphere, while maintaining the project's absolute independence in management and project decisions." Whichever way projects prefer, the Free Software Foundation Europe and its Freedom Task Force will be happy to help projects adopt the Fiduciary Licence Agreement. 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. -- Joachim Jakobs 1. FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the OpenSwarm Project 2. Transcript of Richard Stallman on the Free Software movement 3. Windows Vista released - FSFE recommends switching to GNU/Linux 4. Get Active: Join the Revolution! 1. FSFE becomes the legal guardian of the OpenSwarm Project OpenSwarm is the second project to make use of the fiduciary services of the FSFE Freedom Task Force. OpenSwarm is planned to be a holistic set of model-driven software development tools focused on the easy creation of powerful and business logic enriched applications in the field of Web- and data-centric solutions. By signing the Fiduicary License Agreement (FLA) with FSFE, the project allows FSFE to become its legal guardian. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q1/000165.html 2. Transcript of Richard Stallman on the Free Software movement Ciar?n O'Riordan has compiled a transcript of a lecture given by Richard Stallman in Zagreb. This speech is certainly a good source of information about various Free Software related topics. http://www.fsfeurope.org/documents/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html 3. Windows Vista released - FSFE recommends switching to GNU/Linux FSFE has taken the opportunity of Windows Vista's launch to remind about the dangers and threats arising from the use of proprietary software. As many users will have to convert to a new operating system anyway, FSFE recommends to take the chance to get rid of the chains of proprietary software and switch to a Free Software solution. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q1/000166.html 4. Get Active: Join the Revolution! The internship position in FSFE's office in Z?rich is becoming vacant in March, and FSFE is looking for somebody to continue the series of interested and motivated interns. An internship with FSFE is an interesting, challenging and exciting experience, and there are few other opportunities to work with a highly dynamical NGO on an international level. http://www.fsfeurope.org/contribute/internship.en.html You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html From press at fsfeurope.org Sat Feb 24 18:21:11 2007 From: press at fsfeurope.org (Joachim Jakobs) Date: Sat Feb 24 18:21:58 2007 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] Time to give back: Fellowship Raffle 2007! Message-ID: <200702241821.14294.press@fsfeurope.org> Time to give back: Fellowship Raffle 2007! FSFE announces Fellowship Raffle 2007 at FOSDEM meeting in Brussels, Belgium "The Free Software community is built on the principle of cooperation of many very different parts. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) works exclusively for the benefit of the entire community, including the companies that make use of Free Software," explains Georg Greve, president of FSFE. "We do this work gladly and with great enthusiasm and we always remember that to a large extent this work is made possible by those who work with us and support us, in particular the many Fellows of FSFE." Stefano Maffulli, FSFE's Fellowship coordinator explains: "There are many ways to support FSFE's work, and they are all important, but the Fellowship is special: It is a community of people who take responsibility to contribute on a yearly basis to keep the foundation running and many of them are active in the Fellowship meetings and other activities." Maffulli continues: "Companies support FSFE to show that they appreciate our work, and in turn we like to show that we appreciate our fellows. This year we're delighted to do that through sharing gadgets that were provided by companies who support Free Software: Welcome to the 2007 Fellowship Raffle!" On 1st of April 2007, FSFE will raffle the following devices and books among all its Fellows: - 1 Free Software Greenphone [1] by Trolltech - 3 Developer Discount codes for N800 Internet Tablets (further information [2])[3], by Nokia - 2 Free Software based routers KWGR614 [4] , by NETGEAR - 1 LinSoft BTP-PC amounting to 500 EUR [5], by linsoft.de - 4 USB smart card readers SCR-335 [6], compatible with the Fellowship crypto card on all GNU/Linux distributions, by kernelconcepts.de - 30 German books (among German speaking Fellows only) [7], by linuxland.de - 2 Omnikey PCMCIA CardMan 4040 [8], compatible with the Fellowship crypto card on all GNU/Linux distributions, by xtops.de "We hope that this raffle will not only provide us with an opportunity to thank all our Fellows, but will also help to inform more people about the Fellowship and the work of FSFE," explains Joachim Jakobs, FSFE's media coordinator. "For this reason we are providing web buttons for download that link directly to the Fellowship raffle web page." Stefano Maffulli adds: "This is the third and biggest Fellowship raffle so far. To reflect FSFE's long-term mission and vision, we will probably start to introduce special raffles based on how long people have been part of the Fellowship already." "The Free Software Foundation Europe thanks all sponsors for their support and for providing these prizes to our Fellowship community. We hope that people will have fun with this raffle and the hunt for buttons, because fighting for freedom should also be fun," says Georg Greve. He concludes: "At the same time this is an important job that sometimes can be serious and difficult. So we hope that many more people will come and share both the fun and the hard work with us." 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. [1] http://www.trolltech.com/products/qtopia/greenphone/greenphone_pricing [2] http://maemo.org/maemowiki/N800DeveloperDeviceProgram [3] http://europe.nokia.com/phones/n800 [4] http://www.netgear.com/Products/RoutersandGateways/GWirelessRouters/KWGR614.aspx?detail=Specifications [5] http://www.linsoft.de//engine/productG/workstation/SessionID/ [6] http://www.kernelconcepts.de/products/security.shtml [7] http://www.linuxland.de/books_cd/ [8] http://fsfe.org/raffle/ -- Joachim Jakobs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FSF aims for partnership with hardware manufacturers Boston, MA---March 1, 2007---The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today released a paper entitled, "The road to hardware free from restrictions", detailing ways major hardware manufacturers with power in the market can work with the free software community to establish a "mutually beneficial relationship." The paper, available at, http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/how_hardware_vendors_can_help.html, recommends manufacturers take action in five areas: supporting free software drivers, ending the "Microsoft Tax", removing proprietary BIOS locks, supporting a free BIOS, and rejecting Digital Restrictions Management. Peter Brown, FSF executive director, said, "With the growing utilization of free software and the rejection of Microsoft's Vista, large vendors like HP, Dell, Lenovo and Sun have the opportunity and responsibility to acknowledge the market for hardware suitable for free software users---hardware that meets ethical requirements for user freedom, privacy and security. We hope that this paper will focus attention on what needs to get done in the coming months." A draft of the paper was first sent on January 10, 2007 to HP and Sun Microsystems for their comment. Since then, several related developments have demonstrated that the ideas in "The road to hardware free from restrictions" are widely held within the technology community. Kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman's open offer to all manufacturers for free Linux kernel driver development has generated a sizable response. Dell's recent solicitation of customer feedback was met primarily with proposals to make all Dell machines optionally available without Microsoft Windows, replacing it with either no operating system or with a choice of GNU/Linux distributions. Suggestions for Dell to support LinuxBIOS and to build their laptops with hardware fully supported by free software drivers were also popular choices. In the paper, the Free Software Foundation expresses its eagerness to build on this momentum by assisting hardware vendors interested in making the recommended changes, and it encourages vendors to take a fresh look at this largely unexplored opportunity. ---- The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software---particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants---and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support their work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA. Press Contact: For more information about this announcement or to schedule an interview, please contact Peter Brown or John Sullivan at +1-617-542-5942 or pr@fsf.org. #### _______________________________________________ FSF And GNU Press mailing list http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-press From peterb at fsf.org Wed Mar 7 16:39:29 2007 From: peterb at fsf.org (Peter Brown) Date: Thu Mar 8 14:50:26 2007 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] [GNU/FSF Press] Press release: FSF announces details of its Annual Meeting Message-ID: <1173281970.5161.546.camel@localhost> Boston, Massachusetts, USA---Wednesday, March 7th 2007---The Free Software Foundation announced details for its annual associate member and activist meeting to be held at MIT, Cambridge, MA, on Saturday, March 24th, 2007. Keynote speakers Richard Stallman (FSF president) and Eben Moglen (FSF director and legal counsel) will each address the "Year of the Upgrade" theme, looking at what issues will demand the free software movement's attention after the new version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) is released. This year's meeting will have the ceremony for the FSF's annual free software awards, where winners of the "Award for the Advancement of Free Software" and the "Award for Projects of Social Benefit" will be announced and recognized. Previous winners have included community luminaries like Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt and Alan Cox and the community project Wikipedia. The meeting will also feature practical discussion among FSF members and its board of directors about ways to increase free software adoption and strengthen the free software movement. Staff members will discuss current FSF campaigns and projects, eliciting feedback and input to shape plans for the coming year. Peter Brown, FSF executive director said, "The FSF has had a busy year revising the GNU General Public License and campaigning successfully against Digital Restrictions Management. We see 2007 as a year of opportunity to significantly increase free software adoption, and our annual meeting will help us develop our priorities for the year ahead". Now in its fifth year, this annual gathering has become a sounding board for activities of the Foundation, and a place to develop ideas with the free software community. As part of an interactive "Members Forum" session, Benjamin "Mako" Hill, activist and researcher at MIT's Media Lab, will speak about the impact of free software philosophy on copyright and culture in a presentation called "Defining Free Culture". The full schedule of speakers and details for registration and attendees is published at http://www.fsf.org/associate/meetings/2007. About the Free Software Foundation: The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software - particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants - and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support their work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. Their headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA. Media Contact: John Sullivan Free Software Foundation Phone: +1-617-542-5942 _______________________________________________ FSF And GNU Press mailing list http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-press From press at fsfeurope.org Tue Mar 13 23:17:17 2007 From: press at fsfeurope.org (Free Software Foundation Europe) Date: Tue Mar 13 23:18:36 2007 Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] FSFE Newsletter Message-ID: 1. Fiduicary License Agreement released under GFDL/CC-by-sa 2. FSFE announces big raffle among all Fellows 3. FSFE at FOSDEM in Brussels (Belgium) 4. Ciar?n O'Riordan at SkyCon in Limerick (Ireland) 5. End of internship of Maria Luisa Carli 6. System administration murphy weeks 7. Get Active: Join the SELF project! 1. Fiduicary License Agreement released under GFDL/CC-by-sa Making Free Software projects legally maintainable is increasingly important. This includes maintaining the ability to relicence, ensure licence compliance, and to ensure clean copyright. FSFE's Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) is a copyright assignment carefully crafted to help Free Software projects consolidate their copyright to a single organisation or person. http://fsfeurope.org/projects/fla/fla.en.html The FLA was originally developed and released in 2002 with a grant to allow people use the agreement for their own purposes. FSFE has now released a new revision of the FLA under the terms of both the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike (CC by-sa) license. Project can choose to either apply to be part of FSFE's Fiduciary Programme and make use of the legal network of the Freedom Task Force or adapt the FLA to consolidate copyright into their own organisation using their own legal experts. http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q1/000168.html 2. FSFE announces big raffle among all Fellows As it did in the past years, FSFE wants to thank all Fellows for their support, which is essential in making its work possible. For this purpose, several companies sponsored hardware and books of the 2007 Fellowship raffle, which will be held 1 April 2007. FSFE would like to thank all the companies that donated the gadgets and is happy to pass these gifts on to its supporters. http://www.fsfe.org/raffle http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2007q1/000170.html If you wish to become an essential part of all the activities of FSFE and would also like to get your chance to win some of the many gadgets, join the Fellowship now: http://www.fsfe.org/join 3. FSFE at FOSDEM in Brussels (Belgium) Like the years before, the Free Software Foundation Europe was present with a booth at FOSDEM, one of the biggest Free Software conferences in Europe. This year, FSFE shared the booth with its Spanish associate organisation, the Free Knowledge Foundation. Shane Coughlan presented the Freedom Task Force in a lightning talk, and Georg Greve held the closing talk titled "Beyond GPLv3". An amazing total number of twenty members and volunteers of FSFE shared the work on the booth, answered questions, and talked to interested people. You can find some more information, some pictures and links to the video recordings in the following blog entries: http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/life_after_fosdem http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/shane/communicating_freely/podcast_interviews_with_simon_sun_and_tim_chaos_radio 4. Ciar?n O'Riordan at SkyCon in Limerick (Ireland) Ciar?n O'Riordan represented FSFE at a computer science conference named SkyCon. He spoke about GPLv3, presenting the current state and the work ahead. 5. End of internship of Maria Luisa Carli FSFE's first intern in FSFE's Z?rich office and Freedom Task Force, Maria Luisa Carli, had to go back to Italy just after FOSDEM to finish her studies with an additional course. Marilu is planning to stay involved in FSFE's activities, though. http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/mlc981/marilu_s_blog 6. System administration murphy weeks February was a dark month of system administration at FSFE, starting when one of its core servers going down due to a double hard disk crash in the system RAID-1 array, followed by an almost simultaneous network outage at the backup location, making all backups inaccessible. This not only took down FSFE's main web site, but also that of our Latin American sister, which we are supporting with a virtual server. With some work we managed to get things back to operational state on another machine, and will hopefully be able to bring the crashed server back to life soon. FSFE's infrastructure is mainly volunteer-organised, including the Fellowship portal, the further evolution of which is mainly held back by lack of administrator and developer time. If you wish to volunteer to help on these issues and could maybe even see yourself getting involved more deeply, please get in touch with either: fellowship-hackers (at) fsfeurope.org system-hackers (at) fsfeurope.org 7. Get Active: Join the SELF project! SELF (Science, Education and Learning in Freedom) is a project to develop a platform for the collaborative sharing and creation of free educational materials on Free Software and Open Standards. It will also try to fill this platform with some initial material. The project is funded by the European Commission for a period of two years, from summer 2006 to summer 2008. http://www.selfproject.eu/ During the first half year, the focus was on the analysis of existing material. Now, the implementation phase starts, both for the platform (developed at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Mumbai) and the conversion of existing material. FSFE has set up a mailing list for coordination of FSFE's work: http://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/self There is also a general mailing list for the SELF project: http://mail.selfproject.eu/mailman/listinfo/discussion So if the project sounds interesting to you, please subscribe to the mailing lists, and contribute to the work! You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html