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News Archive for 2006
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21 November 2006
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."
13 November 2006
"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."
03 October 2006
Early this morning, a group of contributing organisations and authors
launched DRM.info, a collaborative information platform about the
potential dangers of Digital Restriction Management (DRM) initiated by
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). The contributing groups come
from different areas, such as digital freedom, network activism, consumer
rights and libraries.
27 July 2006
After six months of public comment, the second public discussion draft of
GPLv3 is now online - responding to public input about patents, Digital
Restrictions Management, and global enforceability among other things.
12 July 2006
European Commission to fine Microsoft 1.5 million Euro per day
retroactively from 16. December 2005, totalling 280.5 million Euro.
Should Microsoft not come into compliance until the end of July 2006,
the daily fines could be doubled. These fines are a reaction to
Microsofts continued lack of compliance with the European Commission
decision to make interoperability information available to competitors
as a necessary precondition to allow fair competition. FSFE has
supported the European Commission from the start of the suit in 2001.
13 June 2006
Marking the half-way point of the year-long public consultation process for
redrafting Free Software's cornerstone licence, the third international GPLv3
conference will host experts from Europe and from around the world.
The venue, in the heart of the city, is the Centre de Cultura Contemporània
de Barcelona (CCCB). There, during the two days of this event, there will
be presentations from experts including Richard Stallman, president of FSF,
Eben Moglen, chairman of Software Freedom Law Center, Georg Greve, president
of FSF Europe and Harald Welte, founder of gpl-violations.org.
19 May 2006
The conference will take place in Barcelona,
Spain, and the exact venue will be announced soon. In January, a
year-long public consultation process for updating the GNU
General Public License was launched. Commonly called "the GPL",
this licence is used by the majority of Free Software to detail
the distribution terms of the software.
09 May 2006
The KDE e.V. - a registered non-profit organisation that represents
the K Desktop Environment (KDE®) in legal and financial matters - and
the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) are proud to announce their
associate status, working together for the promotion and protection of
Free Software on users' desktops in Europe and worldwide.
27 April 2006
"Businesses and public authorities have to pay prices that are kept high
by Microsoft's refusal to share interoperability information with its
competitors, as is common practice in the industry," explains Andrew
Tridgell, president and founder of the Samba Team in his presentation on
behalf of Free Software Foundation Europe in European Court today.
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27 April 2006
Carlo Piana, Free Software Foundation Europe's lawyer on the case
explains: "The interventions made perfectly clear that the Blue Bubble
only existed in the lawyers' pleadings. Meanwhile, Microsoft left no
doubt as to the legal nature of that Bubble: a conglomerate of 46
patents that it claims it holds on ADS, whose main effect is to
prevent interoperability and, eventually, competition."
21 April 2006
"Microsoft's software locks in users and now the company is lobbying to get this lock-in effect legalised by software patents" is the basic message of a feature article Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has published on its
website today.
03 April 2006
The notebook raffle has taken place and two lucky Fellows from Italy and
Netherlands won a HP Compaq Notebook, pre-installed with Debian GNU/Linux.
10 March 2006
Seeing an even greater need today for strong coordinated actions to
protect everyones freedom
26 February 2006
FSFE's way to say thank you for the support: Like last year's PDA,
donated by xtops.de the Free Software Foundation Europe will be
raffling off two HP notebooks to all active Fellows on 1 April this
year. For two lucky Fellows, April Fool's Day will be anything but
foolish.
16 February 2006
"After several years of investigation, the original ruling in 2004, and
a European Court case lasting close to two years, we now have to conclude
that Microsoft never had any intention to comply with the antitrust
ruling," comments Georg Greve, president of the Free Software
Foundation Europe (FSFE). "We were forced to witness years of delays,
stalling and playing for more time during which Microsoft has made no
attempt to allow interoperability and competition with its
competitors, including Free Software such as Samba."
14 February 2006
The Free Knowledge Foundation / Fundación Conocimiento Libre (FKF) and
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) are proud to announce their new
official associate status, working together for the promotion and
protection of Free Software in Spain.
26 January 2006
"It now seems clear this was just another marketing ploy: Yesterday
Microsoft acted like a robber that, when asked to please put away the
gun, tosses you a grenade."