News
News Archive for 2004
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22 December 2004
Bo Versterdorf, President of the European Court, has today rejected
Microsoft's appeal to delay execution of the sanctions.
"Those who value freedom and competition have received two nice
christmas gifts this week. First, new EU member Poland does not allow
the introduction of innovation- and job-killer software patents
through the diplomatic back-door. And now the European Court decides
that Microsoft should not get another four years to further harm its
competitors" says Georg Greve, President of the FSFE.
10 December 2004
The Free Software Foundation Europe believes that freedom is
priceless and works hard for freedom in the digital society.
Being a non-profit organisation, much work is done by
volunteers, but not everything can be done that way. Working
for something as priceless as freedom does have a cost. That
is why we would like you to support our work.
06 December 2004
The European Union is on the way to introduce a legal basis for software
patents in Europe. While you may consider this a topic outside your
daily business, it is likely to become the cause of serious security
problems to European power supplies.
25 November 2004
In the scope of the FSFE WIPO project team, the FSFE will work
with other players to change WIPO from an organisation that is solely
oriented towards monopolisation of knowledge to one that is aimed at
increasing the intellectual wealth of all of humankind through a more
flexible, sustainable and effective tool set.
24 November 2004
"Those who wish to see freedom of market restored should be aware that
never can someone with deeper pockets divert support already given to
FSFE, as it happened with the CCIA. This independence is priceless,
but not without cost. The only thing that might therefore be able to
stop us is lack of resources because of lack of support."
23 November 2004
As Free Software becomes even more important in South Tyrol, the
GNU/Linux User Group Bozen/Bolzano/Bulsan has developed the traditional
Linux Day into the three day South Tyrolean Free Software Conference.
09 November 2004
Microsoft has steadily been soliciting supporters of the European
Commission antitrust case to withdraw their support for the Commission
by offering a series of financial settlements. The agreement with Sun
Microsystems to withdraw has now been joined by financial settlements
with Novell and the CCIA, in which they also agreed to withdraw from the
case.
01 November 2004
The preceding European Commission (EC) was campaigning actively for the
introduction of software patents in Europe. This campaign was against
the information and evidence showing that this would lead to
considerable risk to the European economies.
25 October 2004
Supporting the work of FSFE has just become easier for those
who prefer to donate by credit card and/or via the
PayPal service.
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14 October 2004
Common declaration: "We are convinced that new answers sometimes
require new questions, not more careful repetition of old questions.
[...] We need a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation, dedicated to
the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage
the production and dissemination of knowledge." To view the list of
signatories, please follow the link.
04 October 2004
Have you ever considered offering general insurance for stock brokers
against the risk of losing money? As absurd as this sounds, the
European Commission is seriously considering equivalent measures at
the moment.
29 September 2004
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) casts doubts on the increasing
rumors that Microsoft is willing to settle the antitrust case against
the EU Commission, which is due to come to Court later this week.
Anniversary of the decision of the European Parliament about software
patents
24 September 2004
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) commemorates the
anniversary of the software patents decision by the
European Parliament on 24th September. "The parliament
voted for a restrictive way to grant software patents in
Europe. That decision was wise as it accounted for the
numerous recommendations of scientists throughout the
world. For this reason, we would like to encourage the
parliament to maintain an attitude to this matter that is
consistent with its previous decision - to withstand the
pressure by certain lobbying parties." the President of
FSFE Georg Greve emphasises.
20 September 2004
Having been plagued by permanent problems with viruses, worms and
other bugs, software-giant Microsoft seems to be developing a multiple
personality. "Microsoft's customers should wonder about the sanity of
their business partner", remarks Joachim Jakobs, Press Speaker for the
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
FSFE mourns death of Ralf Niemand
15 September 2004
Free Software activist Ralf Niemand, member of the Wilhelmshaven
GNU/Linux User Group, contributor to the SkoleLinux project and
volunteer of the Free Software Foundation Europe died of terminal
illness on September 14th 2004. His death was much too early and came
as a shock to all who have known him. He will be missed.
06 September 2004
Europe should conserve a competitive advantage and prohibit a legal basis
for software patents: "During the dutch Presidency of the European Union
you have the best opportunity to initiate this revision."
16 August 2004
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and Wilhelm Tux proudly
declare that Wilhelm Tux, a Swiss Free Software organisation, has
officially become associate organisation of the FSFE.
12 August 2004
Due to substantial bank fees charged for international money
transfers, small donations or standing orders are too expensive
to be send directly to the Free Software Foundation Europe bank
account. To rectify this, FSFE in july 2004 entered into an
agreement with UK based associate organisation AFFS to collect
donations and transfer them in larger batches.
FSFE welcomes donations through the simple interface at (only bank cards from UK are accepted):
05 August 2004
In reaction to the decision by the City of Munich to re-evaluate its
migration plans to Free Software, the Free Software Foundation Europe
points out that software patents are equally a significant problem for
both Free Software and proprietary software alike.
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02 August 2004
Software patents will destroy the foundations of IBM's future:
"So while IBM is transforming in reaction to the arms race, upon its
sudden end, IBM will find itself having become a grotesquely deformed
giant with a suddenly useless weapon where all its energies go into
sustaining that deformation."
30 July 2004
"Free Software leads to security of investments" -- Interview about
work and plans of the Free Software Foundation Europe in the German
Computerzeitung. (only available in German)
27 July 2004
FSFE to challenge Microsoft in its appeal against European Commission:
Among general interests of Free Software, the FSFE will specifically
be representing the interests of the SAMBA team, a Free Software
cooperation developing the only remaining competing implementation of
the SMB/CIFS protocols that permit interoperability between various
operating systems and the MS Windows family.
RSS feeds of news and event announcements available
26 July 2004
Our web team has created automatic RSS feeds for news and upcoming
events. Feeds are focus and language dependent.
The URL for the news feed is
https://fsfe.org/news/news.language.rss,
while you find the event feed at
https://fsfe.org/events/events.language.rss.
For example, for German speaking news and the German focus, you would
choose https://fsfe.org/news/news.de.rss.
For your convenience, the news and event pages contain links to the RSS
feed URLs.
08 July 2004
Email interview of German news site Pro-Linux.de with Georg
Greve, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe
(FSFE). The interview covers issue such as the software patent
strategy, the work in the United Nations Summit and future
perspectives. (interview only available in German)
06 July 2004
"Research should be able to earn its money also on the market!" - say
politicians - so we, the Free Software Foundation Europe, understand
when researchers use creative ways to get a better income. But even
researchers should take care not to bite the hand that feeds them. This
danger is real, especially with the actual software patent discussion.
01 July 2004
The projects of the FSFE are multifaceted: participation in the
German government's delegation at the "World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS)", consulting with the European Union
during the establishment of the framework programmes,
participation in AGNULA, a project to build a fully Free
Software distribution for professional musicians and multimedia
authors and also the maintenance and advancement of the GNU
General Public License (GPL). This diversity costs a lot of
money: travels round the world, production of information and
marketing material, personnel cost.
29 June 2004
With the growing attention the FSF Europe attracts in many countries, the
need has arised to build up a flexible, responsive, and well coordinated
translator team.
Translating and proofreading texts is a precious contribution to the work
of the FSF Europe and an excellent chance to spontaneously take part in
the activities of the FSF Europe without long-term obligations.
21 June 2004
"Creating artistic licence by Free Software technology" might have
been the motto of AGNULA (A GNU/Linux Audio distribution -
www.agnula.info): within the scope of the EU project two GNU/Linux
distributions for Debian and Red Hat were developed that are targeted
specifically at professional musicians and multimedia authors.
10 June 2004
Having toured South America from May 20th, 2004 until June 10th, 2004,
Georg Greve put a short summary of his activities there online along with
some pictures.
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19 May 2004
"Europe is about to finally give up on the goal of its heads of states
and governments to become the 'most competitive knowledge-based
region' until 2010 and has repeatedly failed democratically. It is
unfortunate that the optimism and trust placed in the German
government was somewhat premature. Yesterday was not a good day for
Europe and Germany!"
14 May 2004
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) "welcomes the commitment
of the Federal Government of Germany to freedom from software patents
as being of extreme importance for innovation in Europe", Georg
Greve, president of FSFE, comments in a press release.
10 May 2004
What happens in government, society and economy as a whole if these developments are not stopped? We bar people from being creative. We put societal development into the hands of bureaucrats bullying us for their own benefit at every turn. To use the words of the Czech President Vaclav Klaus "The EU is not about freedom and openness, but about bureaucratisation, regulation and harmonisation". If we leave this discussion to others, we may prove him right.
10 May 2004
Today the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) complied with the
explicit request to please remove the "Association for Promotion and
Research in Libre Computing" (APRIL) from the list of associate
organisations. The request was made by APRIL president and FSFE
member Frederic Couchet along with his resignation from FSFE.
04 May 2004
The Free Software Foundation Europe and the Foundation for a Free
Informational Infrastructure endorse an action week from May 10th
to 14th to inform citizens, economy and politics about the harmful
consequences of this initiative. In the course of this action week
demonstrations and panel discussions in many European cities will
take place. To inform you ex ante we have enclosed the joint
position of FSFE and FFII concerning software patents (see below).
15 April 2004
An article by Alessandro Rubini explains how the implementation of the new
Italian electronic ID card breaks the Italian Government's promises to bring
the public administration closer to citizens using information technology.
24 March 2004
After years of successful cooperation through their membership in the
"Verein zur Förderung Freier Software" (FFS), Austria's associate
organisation of the FSF Europe, Georg Jakob, Karin Kosina and Reinhard
Müller have now officially joined the ranks of the FSFE.
05 March 2004
The EU parliament in Strasbourg is about to debate the "Intellectual
Property Rights Enforcement Directive" (IPRED), which further
restricts European law on copyright, patents and other unspecified
"intellectual property rights." The directive's rapporteur is
French MEP Janelly Fourtou, wife of the head of Vivendi Universal,
a group of media and telecommunications companies.
18 February 2004
The FSFs have no doubt that the litigation between SCO against IBM and
Novell cannot affect the users of the GNU/Linux operating system.
Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia University, pro-bono general counsel
of FSF North America, has published a paper that will help Free
Software developers and end-users understand the legal issues and
business risks involved in using the Linux kernel.
09 February 2004
Article by Georg Greve:
"The system and ideology of 'intellectual property' has evolved
exclusively to cater to the needs of large Northern media
corporations. Northern societies, and in particular their artists and
authors, have massive problems with that system themselves.
It is precisely for this system that the digital divide and current power
inequalities are as large as they are."