News
News Archive for 2015
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16 December 2015
Lots of people and companies in our society benefit from
Free Software. The Free Software Foundation Europe is empowering people to
control technology since 2001. To make a difference in our work, we aim at
140.000€ in donations until 31 January, of which we already received
60.000€.
10 November 2015
On 29 October 2015, the European Parliament
adopted a report (2015/2635(RSP)), which condemned mass surveillance throughout
Europe. While focusing primarily on legal precedents of data protection,
Parliament proposed new recommendations to improve IT security
by migrating to free software, as well as adding free software as a
mandatory selection criterion in public IT procurement.
04 November 2015
The European Commission has set a goal to
make the EU's single market fit for the digital age by adopting
“A Digital Single Market Strategy” which is aimed at bringing down
regulatory barriers between 28 different national markets.
According to the Commission, a true Digital Single Market (DSM)
can be achieved by taking the following actions:
Abychom mohli bojovat za Vaší svobodu v informačních technologiich, tak potřebujeme Vaší finanční podporu.
Přidejte se k nám
30 October 2015
Fellows in Zurich started "Free Computer for Free People", an initiative to offer laptops that run completely on Free Software only. This includes alternative firmware as well as free BIOS. By reusing used hardware, the Zurich Fellows also like to foster a sustainable use of hardware.
28 October 2015
Together with 9 other civil and economic
organisations the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) sent a letter
to numerous members of the German Bundestag concerning the compulsory
routers issue at the present Wednesday. The letter is supposed to
highlight the importance of passing the bill for freedom of terminal
devices in telecommunication.
20 October 2015
On 3 October 2015 the Free Software Foundation of Europe celebrated
the Free Software Foundation's 30th birthday with some delicious cake and
many wonderful birthday wishes. The pictures from this celebration are
now available online.
Special thanks to Isabelle Wunderlich and Mirko Boehm for organising the event and all the attendees
who joined the celebration.
13 October 2015
After six years of activity, the
PDFreaders campaign
is coming to a close this month as one of our most successful campaigns.
13 October 2015
Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day that aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. FSFE happily joins the celebration of Ada Lovelace Day by interviewing Isabel Drost-Fromm - long time FSFE Fellow, member of the Apache Software Foundation and co-founder of Apache Mahout as well as the Berlin Buzzwords conference. Read about Free Software migration, free search engines, Java, Berlin and her advice for your personal contributions.
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08 October 2015
Today the Free Software Foundation Europe looks back on the Sony
rootkit fiasco from 2005. This page outlines some facts about the
rootkit and how it was handled, as well as some context about what
these kinds of restrictions mean for the notion of computers as
general purpose machines. 31 October 2015 marks the 10 year
anniversary of when the rootkit was discovered, and in preparation
for this day, we ask you all to use this information and spread the
word, not only about the Sony rootkit, but about the dangers of
digital restrictions on users' freedoms everywhere.
04 October 2015
On 4 October 1985 Harold Abelson, Robert J. Chassell, Richard M.
Stallman, Garald Jay Sussman, and Leonard H. Tower, Jr. incorporated
the Free Software Foundation, Inc. The application included also the
GNU Emacs General Public License, the GNU Manifesto, a list of software
which was already written (Bison, MIT Schema, Hack, plus a list of
several Unix utility replacements)...
22 September 2015
Matthias Kirschner and Alessandro Rubini are FSFE's new
President and Vice President. They were elected last week in Bucharest during
FSFE's General Assembly, while Reinhard Müller was re-elected as Financial
Officer. They will serve FSFE in those positions for the upcoming two
years.
18 September 2015
On July 6th, the European Parliament voted
on a report with a number of recommendations for copyright reform.
We present today our
evaluation of how this could impact Free Software.
18 September 2015
The 6th of June, this year, we proposed
our
own assessment of the draft report on the implementation of Directive
2001/29/EC. Afterwards, some amendments were passed and the report was
voted at the European Parliament on the 9th of July. As expected, there
were plenty of changes; today we present you our evaluation of the final
version of the report.
Abychom mohli bojovat za Vaší svobodu v informačních technologiich, tak potřebujeme Vaší finanční podporu.
Přidejte se k nám
16 September 2015
In anticipation of the Swiss national parliament elections (Nationalrat- / Ständeratswahlen) on 18 October 2015, FSFE Switzerland starts the „Freedomvote“ campaign today, in cooperation with the "Swiss Open Systems User Group“ (/ch/open). The campaign offers an online portal that lists those candidates who will run for election, and their opinion towards Internet policy, Free Software, and open data formats.
02 September 2015
The router. Despite often being dusty it is one
of the most important devices needed for using the internet or phones.
However: Most users in Germany don’t own this device even though it
is located inside their homes and they pay for it.
29 August 2015
FSFE supports the publication of the User
Data Manifesto 2.0, which aims at defining basic rights for
people to control their own data in the internet age. The
manifesto is published today and also supported by GNOME, KDE,
Netzpolitik.org, ownCloud, Spreed, “Terms of Service - Didn’t
Read” and X-Lab.
17 August 2015
In April 2015, we announced a change in the relationship between Kern
Sibbald and the FSFE owing to the cancellation of the Fiduciary
License Agreement (FLA) between Kern and the FSFE which previously
made the FSFE a fiduciary for copyrights in the Bacula software.
04 August 2015
After some discontinuity, FSFE will start again to interview their sustaining members. This way, we like to show you who we are, where we come from and what we stand for. This month and as the first in our new series, we interviewed Neil McGovern, FSFE from the United Kingdom. Neil has been working in the Open Rights Group and was recently elected as Debian Project Leader (DPL). Read about his role as DPL, his engagement in Free Software as well as on political levels.
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16 June 2015
In an important step towards modernising the EU's copyright laws, the
Legal Affairs committee of the European Parliament on Tuesday adopted
a report on the Copyright Directive by MEP Julia Reda.
05 June 2015
On June 16th, the European Parliament's Legal Affairs committee will vote on a report with a number of groundbreaking recommendations for copyright reform.
05 June 2015
The Free Software Foundation Europe is an independent non-governmental organisation working to put people in control of the technology they use. We focus on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS): computer programs which anyone may use, study, share and improve.
27 May 2015
Please note that this position is no longer open for
applications.
The Free Software Foundation Europe was
founded in 2001 and has gone through a tremendous growth
since then, both in the number of volunteers and staff, and
also in the complexity of our technical infrastructure and
the number of services we run and offer for both internal and
external use. We're currently looking for a system
administrator and architect that, for a limited time, can
support us in our work to migrate our services to a new
infrastructure.
06 May 2015
Safecast is a global project to map radiation data from around the
world and release this information openly. When the project just started
out, they used modified hardware, together with their own custom software
and a few clever tweaks, to allow anyone to participate in the project.
This kind of ingenuity, the ability to re-purpose or adapt existing
technology by replacing or supplementing its software, should be
permitted and encouraged by the law. In the example of Safecast,
fortunately nobody prevented them from being innovative.
Abychom mohli bojovat za Vaší svobodu v informačních technologiich, tak potřebujeme Vaší finanční podporu.
Přidejte se k nám
24 April 2015
We currently wrap-up the PDFreaders campaign, and we need your help to
measure our success. Started in 2009 FSFE’s goal with the campaign was to
get rid of advertisement for proprietary PDF readers. We focused on the
websites of public administrations, and many people helped us gather contact
details for over 2000 public websites which advertised non-free software.
Many people helped us to contact the public administrations, governments
were made aware of it and published guidelines. Until now we know that 772
of the 2110 bugs were fixed, which is a 36% success rate. But for most
countries we did not check the status for several months now. That’s why we
need your help now to make one final round. We are looking for volunteers
who can help us checking websites in their native language, following the
step-by-step guide in the blog post.
14 April 2015
Since 2006, the FSFE has been the fiduciary for the copyrights held by developers in the Bacula.org software, on the basis of a Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) and Memorandum of Understanding signed between Kern Sibbald and the FSFE on the 15th of November 2006
08 April 2015
Document Freedom Day is the day when we talk about Open Standards around the world. In 2015, all together, we turned this day once more into a global event with 63 local event organisers in 31 countries on 4 continents. Volunteers around the world, accompanied by international organisations as well as politicians and public services joined our demand for document freedom. Read our report to see what happened during Document Freedom Day 2015.
01 April 2015
The European Commission has published a new version of its strategy for the internal use of Free Software. The strategy now covers the 2014-2017 timeframe. FSFE has provided extensive input to the Commission during the update process.
31 March 2015
FSFE welcomes
the action
which Christoph Hellwig and the Software Freedom
Conservancy are taking to bring VMware into compliance
with the GNU General Public License.
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25 March 2015
Today is Document Freedom Day, the international
day to celebrate and raise awareness of Open Standards. On this
occasion, we would like to reflect on the importance for public
institutions in general, and for the European Commission in
particular, considering its leadership role, of using Open Standards
in all their digital communication and services.
24 March 2015
On March 25 is this year's Document Freedom Day and,
depending on your time zone, it has already started. Document Freedom
Day is the global campaign for document liberation by local groups
throughout the world. So far more than 50 groups registered their events
in over 25 countries ranging from Asia, Europe, Africa, to South and
North America.
16 March 2015
… Nicolas Dietrich! The election period for this year's Fellowship
GA seat has ended on March 13, 2015. FSFE is proud to have had three
outstanding candidates that were running for office this time. Now,
Nicolas Dietrich is happy to take over the GA's Fellowship seat from
former representative Heiki "Repentinus" Lõhmus.
06 March 2015
Currently, there is uncertainty in Switzerland regarding
the development and release of Free Software by public contractors. The
trigger for this was the development and release of the software OpenJustitia
by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. The federal council now wants to examine
whether the publication of Free Software by the federal administration can be
explicitly allowed. The Free Software Foundation Europe demands a clarification
so that publicly-financed software can unambiguously be legally released as
Free Software
03 March 2015
On Saturday, 14 February 2015, people all over the world
showed Free Software contributors their appreciation. It was the fifth year the
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) asked people to participate in the “I
Love Free Software” day. This report shows a variety of love declarations that
happened this day, including blog posts, pictures, comics, poems, and an
#ilovefs Android library. The FSFE thanks everybody who motivated Free Software
contributors this year, and ask everybody to mark 14 February in their
calendars for next year's “I love Free Software” day.
Abychom mohli bojovat za Vaší svobodu v informačních technologiich, tak potřebujeme Vaší finanční podporu.
Přidejte se k nám
02 March 2015
FSFE has recruited long-time Free
Software activist Jonas Öberg to be the organisation's
Executive Director. He joins the organisation's leadership
team on March 1.
02 March 2015
FSFE has recruited long-time Free
Software activist Jonas Öberg to be the organisation's
Executive Director. He joins the organisation's leadership
team on March 1.
24 February 2015
Document Freedom Day (#DFD2015) is a global campaign for document liberation, with grassroots events throughout the world taking place on March 25, 2015. Add your voice to this worldwide celebration of Open Standards, and register your DFD event for 2015!
18 February 2015
In order to push for a more enlightened policy
approach to managing innovation and knowledge, FSFE has submitted a
response [pdf] to an EU consultation on patents and standards. This is
the latest action in FSFE's ongoing work in promoting Open Standards.
10 February 2015
Together with FSFE and other partners, the Bündnis Freie Bildung ("Free Education Alliance") today publishes its position paper about the creation and usage of Open Educational Resources (OER). Therein, the Bündnis demands a consequent publishing of all OER-material under public licences and their availability as Free Software and in Open Standard formats.
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09 February 2015
Every year on 14th February, the Free Software Foundation Europe
asks all Free Software users to think about the hard-working
people in the Free Software community and to show them their
appreciation individually on this "I love Free Software"-Day.