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Newsletter

FSFE Newsletter - December 2016

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Help us now to grow bigger and make a difference in 2017

This year, the FSFE celebrated its 15th birthday. 15 years of empowering users, supporting communities, and pushing for better legislation. 15 years during which we saw that all activities, even if considered small at the time, can become big when we work together. 15 years during which we saw that that all activities, even if considered impossible at the time, can succeed when we stand together. Together, we have even succeeded against the heaviest lobbying of large interest groups. All of this would not have been possible without the continuous support of our community, contributing thousands of hours of their work time and backing us financially. If you are a frequent reader of our newsletter, and you like our work but you are not yet part of our community ... then consider joining the FSFE!

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Russian Bill makes Free Software a Public Priority

In mid October, the lower chamber of the Russian Federation ("Duma") approved a bill that will boost Free Software on multiple levels within the Russian Federation's public sector. It requires the public sector to prioritise Free Software over proprietary alternatives, gives precedence to local IT businesses that offer Free Software for public tenders, and recognises the need to encourage collaboration with the global network of Free Software organisations and communities.

The legislators made an extra effort to ensure a proper use of language. The bill talks about "Free Software", explicitly mentions the four freedoms and even uses "GNU/Linux" to refer to the most widespread free operating system.

As our Policy Analyst Polina Malaja puts it: "The bill is an example of public software procurement done right."

What else have we done?


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From the community

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Good Free Software news

Good news from public administrations in Europe and worldwide: Hungary aims to create a standard Free-Software based PC desktop configuration for all its ministries and central government departments. A parliament resolution urging the government to draft a migration plan to Free Software solutions was adopted by the Parliament of Navarre in Spain. France has added source code to the list of state documents covered by freedom of information laws, but introduces a new exception if disclosure would threaten government security.

Good news on European level: A Free Software FIWARE platform, funded by the European Commission creates new IoT opportunities for businesses, while the Joint Research Centre (JRC), as part of its active Free Software distribution policy, released Free Software for forestry and Internet risk awareness.

Under the light of the Transatlantic Open Data Partnership between EU-US, a new R library for economic data was developed and published on GitHub.

And finally, in 2016, Linux has been running on 99,6%, or 498 out of the top 500 fastest supercomputers in the world .

Help us to improve our newsletter

Do you think we have missed some news, or you'd like specific news to appear in the next newsletter? Please share this and any other feedback by writing to newsletter@fsfe.org

Thanks to all the volunteers, Fellows and corporate donors who enable our work,

your editors Olga Gkotsopoulou and Erik Albers, FSFE

PS: Because of the holiday season there will not be a newsletter in January.