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News Archive for 2005
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23 November 2005
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) filed an application for
leave to intervene in the antitrust suit against Microsoft today. Georg
Greve, President of FSFE said: "The more Microsoft is able to purchase
its opponents' solidarity, the more important FSFE's commitment to
freedom and interoperability is."
These days, FSFE meets adversaries of freedom in various venues: In
Brussels, the 'Intellectual Property Rights European Enforcement
Directive' (IPRED2) is being pushed by the rights-holding industry, and
Microsoft has shown that it was able to rewrite the Vienna Conclusions
on ICT and Creativity for the UN World Summit on Information Society (WSIS).
19 October 2005
"Microsoft finally seems to have made a step forward on their long
march towards giving their users freedom: [...] Given previous
Microsoft statements about the Copyleft approach and in particular the
GNU GPL as 'viral', 'cancerous' and 'communist', seeing Microsoft now
publish licenses applying the very same principles seems quite an
evolution."
14 October 2005
"We congratulate Microsoft on effective use of their considerable
financial resources: First they manage to pay off Sun, then Novell and
the CCIA. Now they convinced Real Networks to serve their own head on
a silver platter for just US $761 Million"
30 September 2005
Not continuing what was begun, or changing from a horse to a mule
midstream, as the honored Indian delegate so eloquently put it, would
be wasting the time and effort spent on this initiative by all sides,
North and South. For this reason we strongly support the notion of
letting the IIM process finish what it began.
06 September 2005
Stichting NLnet donate 150,000 EUR to support GPLv3 activities
The project will bring together thousands of organisations, software
developers, and software users from around the globe during 2006, in
an effort to update the world's most popular Free Software licence. The
GPLv3 promises to be one of the largest participatory comments and
adoption efforts ever undertaken.
30 August 2005
The TuxMobil GNU/Linux Award 2005 has been granted to OpenEmbedded,
OpenZaurus, PI-Sync, KWlanInfo and BlueZ, in recognition of their efforts in
users freedom.
06 July 2005
After years of struggle, the European Parliament finally rejected the
software patent directive with 648 of 680 votes: A strong signal
against patents on software logic, a sign of lost faith in the
European Union and a clear request for the European Patent Office
(EPO) to change its policy: the EPO must stop issuing software patents
today.
28 June 2005
Members of the European Parliament have been given a copy of the
Karlsruhe Memorandum against Software Patents 2005. Issued by Free
Software Foundation Europe, this memorandum collected more than 200
signatures at this year's GNU/LinuxTag conference in Karlsruhe. Citing scientific evidence, the text argues that software patents in Europe will hurt jobs and innovation. Among the supporters are leaders of some of Europe's biggest trade union groups.
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25 June 2005
Giovanni Angoli is the lucky winner of the Sharp SL-C1000 raffled at
GNU/LinuxTag 2005 in Karlsruhe, Germany. FSFE congratulates Giovanni
and thanks Werner Heuser of Xtops.DE who sponsored the PDA for Fellowship
of FSFE!
08 June 2005
Xtops.DE has sponsored a handheld computer which will be raffled on June
25 at 14:00 CEST. The winner will be chosen at random from all FSFE
Fellows whose contribution has been received before that date.
07 June 2005
"Microsoft abuses the good will of Ms. Kroes" - "European Commission
is about to enter legal house-to-house fighting!". Comment of the FSFE
on the latest Microsoft proposal. "The European Court decided in
December 2004 that Microsoft is to publish this information
immediately. This proposal, if accepted, will effectively revert the
court decision for the most serious competitor of Microsoft in this
market."
06 June 2005
Open letter to Mr Borrell Fontelles, President of the European Parliament.
On July 6th, European Parliament will have to decide on the "Software
Patents" directive. By relying on undefined terms and ineffective
limits, the text that the Council has handed to the Parliament would
allow patents on software standards, business methods, and website
development.
03 June 2005
Europe's biggest Free Software conference, the GNU/LinuxTag in Karlsruhe, is less than three weeks ahead. The FSFE has set up a page to gather, list and publish information about its activities there.
31 May 2005
"The FSFE is a great place to work, and I've enjoyed almost every
single day. In few other companies or organisations would I have had
the chance to do useful work and learn in an international context like
I did here. Take this chance, if you can."
20 May 2005
On 7th May 2005, the general assembly of FSFE met in Vienna, Austria to
review the activities of the past year and plan ahead for the next year
to come. As this was the end of the second electorial period for
FSFE's extended executive committee, the executive committee presented
another two-year executive summary.
07 May 2005
Four years after its official start in March 10th, 2001 and the
finalisation of its founding process in April 24th, 2001, the general
assembly on 7 May 2005 in Vienna, Austria marks the end of another
electorial period for the Free Software Foundation Europe Extended
Executive Committee.
02 May 2005
Open letter to Mr McCreevy, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services.
"The European Commission is currently involved in a historic antitrust
suit with Microsoft. [...] Unfortunately, that unique success is now in
danger of becoming a meaningless victory."
19 April 2005
After some months of discussions including FSFE president Georg Greve,
a team of Free Software advocates in Latin America published their declaration
of intent to join the global network of Free Software Foundations.
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13 April 2005
Statement at Inter-Sessional, Inter-Governmental Meeting (IIM), 11-13
April 2005: "We explicitly support the Friends of Development in their
statement
that no tool should ever be promoted for its own sake and should
therefore be beyond review. [...] Essential building blocks of human
creativity, such as access to knowledge and freedom to participate in
society and economy should once again become the norm, not the
exception. [...]"
05 April 2005
Open Letter to staunchly pro-software patent European Information & Communications Technology Industry
Association: "We would like to inform you how
software patents pose a threat to the International Financial Reporting Standards
(IFRS), as all the ideas used in these standards will be implemented
in software and would therefore be patentable."
31 March 2005
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the Samba Team have
presented terms explaining how Microsoft could be brought into
compliance with the decision of the European Court of First Instance
of December 2004.
21 March 2005
Pushed by the FSFE, the EU antitrust case against Microsoft is gathering momentum again. "We will help the Commission to bring Microsoft to its feet and move towards re-establishing competition", Georg Greve, FSFE's president.
07 March 2005
Letter to Catherine Parmentier, Chief Executive Officer of EUROCITIES:
"With the introduction of software patents, European cities would have
to be aware of dramatically increasing costs and an increasingly
difficult legal situation with high risks for the administration."
28 February 2005
"We stand up to protect our freedom to shape and participate in a
digital society that respects liberty and privacy." With this slogan,
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) started its fellowship
program at the FOSDEM fair for Free Software last weekend in Brussels.
11 February 2005
On 1st February 2005, the United Nations Working Group on
Internet Governance (WGIG) published a set of 20 issue papers
concerning "Internet Governance." Together with its associate
organisation La Fundación Vía Libre, the Free Software
Foundation Europe managed to comment on the paper on "Cyber
security, cybercrime", which, among other things, asked to
outlaw the art of finding elegant solutions to non-obvious
problems ("hacking") and the paper on "Intellectual Property
Rights", which for instance asked to "balance human rights
with the interests of rights-holders."
11 February 2005
Microsoft has published an agreement which allows Free Software projects
like SAMBA to use the software interface information, but bans it from
publishing the software as Free Software.
07 February 2005
The column TUX&GNU@school 8th edition is now available. In this edition,
Mario Fux presents GAMGI, Skolelinux and the KDE Edutainment project.
In future, the column will be published in five languages (German,
English, French, Swedish and Spanish).
07 February 2005
Once Basel II becomes widely used, a dramatic increase in software
patent infringement lawsuits for this area is likely to occur on a
global basis. Any bank or any of its customers for Basel II based
software may become target of such legal action -- the risk is
incalculable and can bring about multi-billion Euro lawsuits.
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03 January 2005
Software patents are putting the wealth of the software patent lobby over
the health of citizens in Europe and around the world.