News
News Archive for 2011
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23 December 2011
Paul Boddie is a developer in the bioinformatics domain. In this
interview, he explains his conception of Free Software, which has a
lot to do with sustainable computing and with the ability to
use, maintain and develop solutions indefinitely.
20 December 2011
Read about ground-breaking decision of the Court of Justice of EU, AG's opinion in awaited European interoperability ruling, two software patent cases and much more.
13 December 2011
City officials in Helsinki, Finland, are overwhelmingly
satisfied after trying
out the Free Software office suite OpenOffice.org on their laptops. 75% of 600
officials have been using OpenOffice.org exclusively since February, as part of
a pilot project where the city installed the program on 22,500 workstations.
13 December 2011
This was an exciting year for Free Software, and for FSFE. We fought
against software patents and the way they restrict Free Software and
competition. We helped to defend the GPL against those who would take
away our freedom to study and modify the software on our computers,
and worked on many other important issues.
08 December 2011
Competition authorities in the US and Europe are
currently investigating the sale of 6000 patents from Nortel,
a bankrupt telecommunications equipment manufacturer, to a
consortium of Apple, Microsoft and four other companies.
08 December 2011
Read about ground-breaking decision of the Court of Justice of EU, abuse of copyright against an Android developer, AG's opinion in awaited European interoperability ruling and much more.
06 December 2011
The European Commission has adopted a set of proposals for its
next framework program. Called Horizon 2020, this program will provide
80 billion EUR for research and development projects from 2014 to
2020. Prior to finalisation of the proposal, FSFE had provided
input
to the Commission in order to make the program accessible for Free
Software research and projects. Our input also aims at making the
results of publicly funded research available as widely as possible.
30 November 2011
FSFE has sent input to the European Commission on its upcoming
seven-year flagship program for research funding. Under the "Horizon
2020" program, the European Commission will support research and
development in Europe with 80 billion Euro from 2014 to 2020.
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28 November 2011
The YaCy project is releasing version 1.0 of its peer-to-peer Free Software search engine. The software takes a radically new approach to search. YaCy does not use a central server. Instead, its search results come from a network of currently over 600 independent peers. In such a distributed network, no single entity decides what gets listed, or in which order results appear.
28 November 2011 – Karsten Gerloff, Eszter Bakó
The European Commission published a Green Paper to launch a public debate on the key issues to be taken into account for future EU research and innovation funding programmes. FSFE decided to contribute and provide input to this process.
23 November 2011
Mirko Boehm currently works as a researcher at the Technical University of Berlin, focusing on the subject of Free Software and copyright and patents. For a long time he has been involved with KDE. In our November Internship Interview he talks about interactions between Free Software communities and “corporate” world, and the role of Free Software at universities and in education.
22 November 2011
The controversial ACTA treaty will be discussed tomorrow in the a closed meeting of the European Parliament's committee on international trade (INTA). Together with six other civil society organisations, FSFE has urged the Parliament to make the committee session public, so that European citizens can form their own opinions on ACTA.
17 November 2011
The patent litigation between Microsoft and Barnes & Nobles is taking a new turn, with the revelation of Microsoft's patent strategies against Android: FUD, invalid patents, etc. according to Barnes & Nobles. Also, new questions arise on exact scope of the copyrightability of software, with the litigation between Oracle and Google, again on Android, exploring new issues on linking, user-space and APIs specifications.
14 November 2011
Erik Josefsson is the winner of the Nordic Free Software Award
2011. With the award, the Swedish Foundation for Free Culture and
Free Software (FFKP) honours Josefsson for his achievements as a
campaigner for freedom in the information society.
07 November 2011
The Dutch government wants to tie the country's schools to
a single software vendor for years to come. Dutch students using Free Software
or devices without Silverlight-support will find themselves locked out of
schools' online systems due to the use of proprietary technology and closed
standards. Marja Bijsterveldt, the secretary of education, recently said that
she is unwilling
to enforce the Dutch government's own Open Standards policy on educational
institutions. Instead, the government will accept long-term vendor
lock-in of educational institutions.
07 November 2011
On November 8th the Regional Court of Berlin [Landgericht
Berlin] issued its decision in the previously reported case AVM Computersysteme
Vertriebs GmbH (AVM) v. Cybits AG (Cybits). In this case, AVM was essentially
trying to stop Cybits from modifying GNU GPL licensed Free Software inside of
their AVM Fritz!Box products. Yesterday, the court dismissed this principal
claim. Thus, it also confirmed that users of embedded devices with
pre-installed Free Software have the legal freedom to make, install, run and
distribute modifications to this Free Software. The Free Software Foundation
Europe (FSFE) and gpl-violations.org, both welcome this decision.
23 October 2011
Rikard Fröberg works at the The Society for Free Culture and Software, and
contributes this year to the FSCONS organisation for the third time.
In the October Internship Interview he considers the importance of having an
active and engaged community of users, which, thanks to events like FSCONS, have
the opportunity of direct interaction.
28 September 2011
Last week Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the Next Big Thing (TM) for Facebook: OpenGraph. Facebook intends to act as its own private Internet, but fortunately there are lots of projects out there that will do the same things that Facebook does, and much more.
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22 September 2011
Stefan Kangas is the President of the recently started Fripost, the Free
Email Association, which proposes itself to deliver a free and reliable Email
service. This service, which is running since February, represents an alternative
to proprietary Email providing services, which may limit user's freedom and privacy.
04 September 2011
Pictures from the FSFE talks at the Manchester DIY Feminist Festival.
23 August 2011
Richard Shipman, Teaching Fellow at the Computer Science
department of Aberystwyth University, talks about the
importance of promoting Free Software alongside
alternatives at school level, and what role the computer
sciences can play in relating the messages of Free Software
to other institutions and disciplines.
14 August 2011
On Saturday 13th August Free Software activists came to FSFE’s PDF Readers Sprint in Manchester and found 59 previously unreported adverts for proprietary PDF readers, all of them on UK Council websites.
14 August 2011
OggCamp 2011 attracted 200-300 people, and the FSFE booth was successfully run by myself and Chris Woolfrey. We talked to approximately 60 people, handed out approximately 120 leaflets, received one donation, and sold five t-shirts. FSFE was generally well received and I felt that the booth was a great success.
09 August 2011
This weekend Free Software activists will find and report web advertising for proprietary software that is being funded by the British Government. Activists will meet on Saturday at Manchester's 'MadLab' Hackerspace to hunt for new adverts and contact government departments requesting that they be removed.
03 August 2011
What constitutes a socially acceptable and sustainable approach to "Cloud Computing" and "Software as a Service"? Georg Greve examines seven categories of requirements of cloud based systems which are truly Free.
28 July 2011
Computer Aided Design software is critically important to a variety of industries and professions. It's also notorious for being poorly catered for by Free Software applications. Here's a brief summary of the current situation.
23 July 2011
Bernhard Reiter, co-founder of FSFE, talks about funding Free
Software development and advocacy, the need for salaried
campaigners, and the evolution of FSFE from its humble origins.
18 July 2011
At FSFE's General Assembly which took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on
June 11, FSFE's members elected Henrik Sandklef as the organisation's
Vice President. A computer scientist and GNU Hacker from Gothenburg,
Sweden, Henrik has been active with FSFE since 2005. He takes over
from Fernanda Weiden, who held the volunteer position for the past two
years.
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23 June 2011
The Deputy Coordinator of FSFE’s Education Team provides an insight into the team's latest efforts at increasing the use of Free Software in education.
22 June 2011
Yesterday in Berlin a court hearing took place
in a case that could set a crucial precedent for the embedded industry
(see also "AVM violating license of the Linux
kernel"). In the lawsuit between AVM and Cybits, AVM maintained
that others should not be allowed to modify Free Software on computers
bought from AVM, such as the widely used Fritz!Box. At the heart of the
debate is the Linux kernel, distributed under the GNU GPL which
guarantees exactly this freedom to users. Free Software Foundation
Europe (FSFE) and gpl-violations.org today published a
detailed report
about the hearing.
20 June 2011
Berlin, 20th June - Tomorrow on June 21st a legal case
will be heard before the District Court of Berlin which may have enormous
consequences for the way that software is developed and distributed. The
adversaries in the case are the manufacturer and distributor of DSL routers AVM
Computersysteme Vertriebs GmbH (AVM), and Cybits AG (Cybits) which produces
children's web-filtering software. Both companies use the Linux kernel, which is licensed
under the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GNU GPL); a Free Software
license permitting everyone to use, study, share, and improve works which use it.
08 June 2011
On today's World IPv6 Day, FSFE is pleased to announce
that almost all of its servers are now reachable via IPv6.
25 May 2011
Luxembourg, May 25 - FSFE played a key role at a Microsoft hearing
before the European Union's General Court on Tuesday, helping explain
the intricacies of Free Software servers.
23 May 2011
Florian discusses the past present and future of LibreOffice and The Document Foundation, and his views on the importance of Free Software marketing.
18 May 2011
We need your help to write a paper with details of recommended Free Software applications for use in the UK public sector. Please contribute your knowledge by joining us on Etherpad.
11 May 2011
In the case of the Foreign Office turning away from Free
Software, the German Government is entangling itself in contradictions. The
reaction of the Government to an inquiry by "Bündnis 90/Grüne" has led to
more pending questions than answers.
06 May 2011
FSFE's UK Team asks The Guardian Newspaper to adhere to Open Standards when publishing digital resources for teachers.
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02 May 2011
On Friday, Free Software Foundation
Europe asked the European Commission to create a legal
avenue for citizens seeking collective redress against
companies. In its
contribution to a public
consultation by the
Commision, FSFE argues that consumers should be able to join
forces in order to defend their rights against harmful business
practices.
02 May 2011
As British Telecom plans to roll out their new music subscription service to its 5.5 million broadband customers, FSFE asks them to make user freedom one of the product's key features.
23 April 2011
Michiel explains how the Unhosted project could change the face of Free Software web applications, and solve problems of privacy, scalability and affordability for all kinds of software provided as a service.
20 April 2011
Competition authorities in Germany and the
United States today highlighted the fundamental role that Free
Software plays for competition in the software market. After
several months of discussions, the US Department of Justice
(DOJ) and the German Federal Competition Office (FCO) have
allowed a consortium of Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and EMC to
acquire 882 patents from Novell only subject to conditions
clearly intended to prevent their use against Free Software
players.
20 April 2011
FSFE calls Free Software supporters to participate in the
ongoing PDFreaders campaign
and remind public institutions to remove advertisements of proprietary PDF
readers from their websites.
18 April 2011
Free Software Foundation Europe has
provided the European Commission with input on modernising the
way in which public bodies buy software and related
services.
12 April 2011
On April 6, FSFE provided the German competition authorities with its
views
on the sale of Novell's patents to CPTN, a joint venture of
Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle. According to the German authorities,
the terms of the sale have been slightly modified since
we registered
our concerns with them on December 22, 2010.
Despite these modifications, the transfer of a substantial number of
patents to firms with a history of using them against Free Software
remains a worrying prospect. Both documents are available on our
overview
page for the case.
01 April 2011
Today FSFE announced a new cutting-edge development: the Analogue Printer.
30 March 2011
Today the ARD internet platform Tagesschau.de will
receive an award for the use of Open Standards at the "Document Freedom
Day". The prize is awarded by the Free Software Foundation Europe
(FSFE) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure e.V. (FFII)
for offering the broadcasted shows also in the free video format "Ogg Theora".
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30 March 2011
At Document
Freedom Day on 30 March 2011, the Free Software Foundation Europe
(FSFE) awarded the German City of Munich the Document Freedom Day
Prize.
30 March 2011
Today, activists in 37 cities around the world are raising awareness for
Open Standards and open document formats. In workshops, talks and other
events, they are explaining why Open Standards and Free Software are crucial
to a free and competitive information society.
30 March 2011
As companies and communities come together to raise awareness of Open Standards for the forth consecutive Document Freedom Day, the issue of freedom from restricted digital files is more relevant in the UK than ever.
27 March 2011
As Britain reverses its traditional role and moves to the fore of European public sector Free Software policy, FSFE explains the most important recent developments.
23 March 2011
In this interview, Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen from KO GmbH describes
the aims of the GamingFreedom.org project, as well as what Free
Software could mean for gaming in future.
10 March 2011
Free Software Foundation Europe is ten years old this March. FSFE was
founded in 2001
as "an organization dedicated to Free Software activities in Europe" and
"the official sister
organization of the Free Software Foundation in the United States"
in Europe.
01 March 2011
All through the month of February, FSFE's Fellows cast their votes
for one of their number to represent them in FSFE's General
Assembly. The election period ended yesterday at midnight, with
the following results:
01 March 2011
The 'Institude for Government' think tank has published a 100 page report on public sector IT in the UK called "System Error: Fixing the flaws in government IT", which calls for dramatic change to government attitudes, and wider use of both Free Software and, as Glynn Moody points out, the principles behind its development.
01 March 2011
In a meeting called by the Home Office's lead architect, members of the British Computer Society's Open Source Specialist Group argued that some proprietary software was "viral" in the way that it had spread and stagnated within government and industry, and should be banned from government systems.
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01 March 2011
A presentation given by the Cabinet Office which outlines its expectations for greater availability and support of Free Software in the public sector is available to the public. It makes clear that the government sees great value in high quality FS, and expects to make significant savings by using it.
27 February 2011
Notes and pictures from FSFE's attendance at two important events last week.
25 February 2011
Research programme publishes damning report of public health ICT, and recommends Free Software and Open Standards.
23 February 2011
Free Software activist, Creative Commons musician, and professional geologist Massimo Barbieri discusses his experiences with Free art, software, and standards.
15 February 2011
February 14, 01:38:27 UTC, the first identi.ca message related to FSFE’s “I ♥ Free Software” campaign airs on identi.ca. This was only the start of a tremendous love declaration to Free Software developpers and applications that went out until late at night, around 3:00 a.m.
11 February 2011
Why not make this February 14th a very special Valentine's Day?
On Valentine's Day, FSFE calls on Free Software users
everywhere
to show
their love for Free Software. It is the perfect occasion to
show our love for Free Software and the possibility to use
computers in freedom.
09 February 2011
Free Software Foundation Europe is asking the Members of the European
Parliament to wait for legal advice before voting on a unitary patent
for Europe. While a proposal is on the Parliament's agenda for the
coming week, a legal opinion by the European Court of Justice is
expected later this month.
02 February 2011
A Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) convida indivíduos, grupos da
comunidade e instituições a celebrar o Dia da Liberdade dos Documentos
(DFD) no dia 30 de março. DFD é um dia de ação global para celebrar
padrões abertos e formatos de documentos abertos, e sua importância.
Padrões abertos garantem a liberdade de acesso aos seus dados, e a
liberdade de criar Softwares Livres que possam escrever e ler dados
nesses formatos específicos.
02 February 2011
The process might have slipped away quietly. But now it is in the spotlight, thanks to a request from the SPD parliamentary group: The Foreign Office (AA), once a "beacon project" for the use of Free Software in the federal ministries, will return to proprietary software. The Linux-Verband (LIVE) and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) regret this development.
01 February 2011
Giacomo Poderi and
Sam Tuke are the new Country Coordinators for
the Italian and British Country Teams respectively.
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23 January 2011
Political veteran Anne discusses new ways influence European legislation, the scale of Free Software support in developing countries, and the importance of local culture in community campaigning.
13 January 2011
After months of work by FSFE's
Web Team a new
website design has been launched, bringing with it a fresh look, improved
infrastructure, and new features.
13 January 2011
Free Software Foundation Europe has written to the
German competition authorities in order to share its concerns about
the sale of Novell's patents to a consortium called CPTN, made up of
Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and EMC.