Legal Support Activities
Como organización no gubernamental sin ánimo de lucro, la Free Software Foundation Europe trabaja para crear un entendimiento general y un apoyo al Software Libre y los Estándares Abiertos. Las siguientes actividades son acciones concretas que realizamos en las áreas de concienciación pública, defensa de políticas y apoyo legal.
Desde su fundación en 2001, la FSFE ha estado trabajando cada día para promover el Software Libre en Europa y más allá. Con nuestras actividades concretas, basadas en los tres pilares de nuestro trabajo, nos centramos en proteger y ampliar los derechos de los usuarios. Algunas de nuestras acciones duran muchos años, otras tienen objetivos a corto plazo, pero todas forman parte de nuestra misión: capacitar a los usuarios el control de la tecnología.
Otra parte importante de nuestro trabajo consiste en el compromiso continuo y el trabajo de fondo. Estamos presentes en decenas de conferencias al año, apoyamos y mantenemos una excelente comunidad y la dotamos de recursos útiles. Además, somos un punto de contacto de referencia para todas las preguntas y consultas sobre la libertad del software, los Estándares Abiertos y los derechos de los usuarios. También proporcionamos recursos educativos básicos sobre cuestiones legales y de licencias de Software Libre.
Lea más sobre cuestiones legales del Software Libre y nuestro enfoque general en este área.
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REUSE Software
The FSFE is running a project to make licensing easy for humans and machines alike. It solves a fundamental issue that Free Software licensing has at the very source: what license is a file licensed under, and who owns the copyright? REUSE provides easy recommendations in three steps that help users, developers and legal professionals.
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Licence Questions
The FSFE’s Licence Questions mailing list is our group of volunteers dedicated to provide help with Free Software licences and compliance. If you need advice on what Free Software licence you should use, or if you want to know more about what rights you have over a piece of Free Software, you can contact us.
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Next Generation Internet
The FSFE is a partner organisation of NGI, a coalition of non-profit organisations from across Europe. Funded by the EC, it provides grants to work on new ideas and technologies that contribute to the establishment of the Next Generation Internet. The FSFE provides legal support for these projects.
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The ZOOOM Initiative
The FSFE is part of these European consortium to promote and raise awareness about the importance of Free Software, Open Data, and Open Hardware among academia, business, industry, and innovation supporting organizations. As a big part of our work, we are promoting the REUSE specification as an important element for licensing compliance.
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Legal Network
The Legal Network is a neutral, non-partisan, group of experts involved in Free Software legal issues with currently several hundreds of participants from different legal systems, academic backgrounds and affiliations. The aim of the Legal Network is to promote discussion and foster better knowledge of the legal constructs that back Free Software.
Más Actividades Legales
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Fiduciary Programme
The Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) allows software projects to assign and consolidate copyrights to a named fiduciary, for the effective management of their copyright status by this fiduciary. This permits developers to focus on making great applications, rather than spending their time dealing with legal administration. While the FSFE no longer accepts new projects under the Fiduciary Programme, we continue to offer customisable versions of the Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) for your use.
Software Patents in Europe
We are working towards a world where software does what software users want it to do. For this, software users must be able to participate in the development and distribution of the software. Software patents block this goal by adding legal and financial risks to software development and distribution and by giving the patent holders legal power to completely prohibit software developers from using the patented ideas.
Microsoft vs. EU Antitrust CaseTerminado
In 2001 the European Union started investigating Microsoft's dominant position in the market for desktop operating systems. The FSFE played two key roles in this case. First, we represented the interests of Free Software developers. Second, we are a public interest organisation who cannot be bought off. Thanks to the excellent work by all involved parties, the case has been won in all rulings up to the European Court of Justice in 2012.
EURA Slovakia caseTerminado
The Slovak company EURA Slovakia has been facing EUR 5600 in fines because it did not buy and use the Microsoft Windows operating system for submitting electronic tax reports. Slovak tax administration gave EURA only two options: either to buy and use Microsoft Windows or face the fines. The FSFE assisted in this case to advocate for platform-neutral solutions for such procedures instead. Unfortunately, the court decided against Free Software and Open Standards, but we were able to raise awareness about these wrongdoings in Slovakia and beyond.
AVM GPL violationTerminado
Can a company modify GPL-licensed software on a third-party device? The router manufacturer AVM accused Cybits of copyright infringement and trademark claims because they modify the original router firmware which is largely based on the Linux kernel. Together with gpl-violations.org we successfully convinced the court that the provisions in the GPL license are binding: software under this license can be freely modified and installed even if it is shipped as part of an embedded device's firmware.
MS-OOXMLTerminado
Since the very beginning of the standardisation process for Microsoft's Office Open XML - OOXML (hereinafter MS-OOXML), the FSFE has expressed serious doubts about whether MS-OOXML could be considered as open, if even as a standard at all. The FSFE first raised the issue in the community and led the movement against the standardisation of MS-OOXML, following closely over the years the relevant developments.
GPLv3Terminado
El 29 de junio de 2007 se publicó la tercera versión de la General Public License (GPL) de GNU, marcando el final de un proceso de consulta pública de dieciocho meses. Durante este tiempo, la FSFE trabajó para divulgar los cambios propuestos para la licencia, ayudar a la comunidad a participar en el proceso de consulta pública y documentar la discusión con objeto de hacer el tema lo más accesible posible.
AGNULA: A GNU/Linux Audio distributionTerminado
The AGNULA project aimed at the creation of a fully functional, entirely Free Software GNU/Linux distribution for professional audio users. It is a project run by key players in the audio field with funding by the European Commission. The FSFE as a partner of this project is taking care of the legal issues, the long-term aspects and also making sure the Free Software community interests are heard.