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FSFE awarded Mozilla grant

Free Software Foundation Europe has been awarded a grant from Mozilla. As announced during this weekend's FOSDEM conference in Brussels, FSFE will receive EUR 25,000 to support its work for freedom in the information society.

"We are very grateful to Mozilla for their support. It's great to see the hard work of everyone in this organisation recognised in this way," says Karsten Gerloff, FSFE's President. "The challenges to our freedom are coming thick and fast, and Mozilla's grant gives us a real boost in addressing them."

"Mozilla has picked FSFE as a grant recipient due to its impressive track record when it comes to software freedom and user sovereignty. This is especially important at a time where user control is threatened, particularly on the legislative (SOPA / PIPA & ACTA) and technology (cloud & social networks) fronts", says Tristan Nitot, Mozilla spokesperson and co-founder of Mozilla Europe.

Mozilla awarded grants to six organisations further strengthen open web, promote Free Software and free technologies, and strengthen user sovereignty on the Web in Europe. Along with FSFE, grants were awarded to APRIL, FOSDEM, Framasoft, Modern Poland Foundation, and Participatory Culture Foundation.

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FSFE Newsletter - February 2012Reclaim your smartphone!

Smartphones are small computers that we carry around all the time. Unfortunately, most smartphones are not controlled by us, the users, but by the manufacturers and the operators. Even Android phones are being shipped with non-free software and proprietary add-ons that usually do not work in the full interest of us. Software updates will only keep to be available if the manufacturer still has a commercial interest in your device. The applications available from the official market are most of the time non-free. Nobody is allowed to study how they work and what they really do on your phone. Sometimes they do not work exactly as you want, but sometimes they might even contain malicious features.

Running only Free Software on your device puts you in full control. Even though you might not be able to directly exercise all of your freedoms, you will benefit from a vibrant community that can do it together.

FSFE is collecting information about running an Android system as free as possible. We try to coordinate the different efforts, but we need your help with it. Join our mailing list, update the wiki and thereby enable more people to use Free Software on their everyday computers.

Lesson 1: Learn how to programme!

Our education team has done solid work in 2011, including our NL edu campaign. Free Software permits children to learn how software works and thus to understand the concepts underlying a whole category or type of software. They are then prepared to adapt to any environment, which is a key skill nowadays. In addition, we believe that the possibility to tinker does motivate children easily to learn autonomously. Finally, Free Software allows them to understand computers in a more depth.

Sam Tuke was asked by the BBC to comment about suggestions that the British Government may add basic programming skills to the national curriculum, and whether this would have a political impact on society in terms of how we interact with technology. The education team will have a brief meeting at the upcoming FOSDEM, at the 4th and 5th of February. You are welcome to join.

Already plans for 28th of March?

Open Standards make it easier for individuals, companies and the public administration to switch to Free Software. The goal of the Document Freedom Day is to raise awareness for Open Standards so people have more freedom. This year your editor is in charge of DFD and he will bluntly promote it in this and upcoming newsletters. At the moment, please save the date 28th of March, send our country teams nominations for the Document Freedom Award, help us to gather information for our Standards Quartet, find street artists to promote the idea of Open Standards, and contact the DFD team if you want to become a supporting organisation.

Something completely different

• Time to vote: The 2012 Fellowship election is running until the end of February. As Fellow you can decide between Albert Dengg, Gert Seidl, and Nikos Roussos. On 22nd February we plan to have a chat meeting with the candidates.
• Slovak Copyright Act: FSFE intern Martin Husovec sent letters to four members of Slovak Parliament that proposed a highly awaited amendment, but later faced its dismissal due to preliminary elections.
• Heiki Ojasild joined the Free Software Foundation Europe in 2011, undertaking the task of translating fsfe.org into Estonian. He is currently developing an XChat add-on, a website for free SVG and JavaScript games, and asked Estonian politicians questions about Free Software. Read more in this month's Fellowship interview about copyright, Digital Restrictions Management, kopimism, and activism.
• Richard Stallman's new article "Measures Governments Can Use to Promote Free Software" is out.
• Two new editions of the legal news cover the US Supreme Court decision on copyright extension, patent inflation, the release of the Mozilla Public License version 2.0 which is GNU GPL-compatible, and more.
• During the January 18th protest against SOPA, we blacked out our website joining other organisations to protect the Internet.
• Here a selection from the Fellowship planet aggregation:
  • The new FSFE Fellowship blog theme — a name, a first version. Presenting: Pome 1.0.
  • Interested why Thomas Koch suggests you should stop coding for money?
  • You should demand Free Software in a business context because it makes sense and saves a lot of money, says Jelle Hermsen.
  • Fellow No1 tells us how much 57 persons in Randa can eat while hacking on Free Software
  • What is the "web trap"? Heiki Ojasild argued to treat HTML, SVG and CSS as tools that should be as accessible to everyone as software in general should be.
  • And a nice hardware hack: Computer startup aid using a LEGO train.

Get active: More love reports instead of bug reports!

Let us admit it, the Free Software community is often very critical. We write bug reports, tell others how they can improve the software, ask them for new features, and to not spare with criticism. Sometimes we forget to say "thank you, for all your work". As in the last years, we want to change this, at least for one day. So on Tuesday the 14th of February we will celebrate the "I love Free Software" - Day.

Get active, buy your favourite developer a drink or give them a hug (ask for permission first), write an e-mail/letter expressing your feelings, create nice pictures, donate to a Free Software initiative, use another of our suggestions or be create yourself to show how you appreciate people, working hard to enlarge or defend our freedom. Beside that help us to promote the activity with our banners, by e-mail, (micro)blog or in your (distributed?) social networks.

New this year is a whole day event in the Unperfekthaus in Essen (Germany) and that all our Fellows automatically get an login@ilovefs.org e-mail alias.

Thanks to all the Fellows and donors who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE

--
Free Software Foundation Europe
FSFE News
Upcoming FSFE Events
Fellowship Blog Aggregation
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Free Software legal news

Read about copyright originality in the EU, publication of Library License, European Commissions proposal to reform the old data protection rules, iPad litigations and more.

Quick Navigation: › Copyright › Privacy › Open Standards and antitrust › Patents and designs › Free Operating Systems

CopyrightCopyright originality in the EU

The debate about copyright originality threshold is growing within European jurisdictions due to an expected decision of the Court of Justice of the EU (SAS v. World Programming). In January, the `Red Bus' case in the UK, and a decision on newspapers' status in Slovakia have shed light upon what exactly is copyrightable.

Indeed, a case in the UK over infringement of copyright in a photograph showing an iconic London red bus with Big Ben and Westminster as a black and white background, is raising arguments over originality and copyright doctrine about intent that could have important effects on software developers, as Andrew Katz explained.

• Copyright case spells trouble for developers, Andrew Katz
• See also, Wheels on the birss by IPKat
• an article about French copyright of photographsat the 1709blog

Another case in Slovakia answered the issue of originality in newspapers articles negatively.

• Newspaper articles not creative enough. An issue for the CJEU? by FSFE's intern Martin Husovec at Kluwer Copyright Blog
• See also, a summary of recent CJEU cases by Martin Husovec.

Library License

The Library License projects to give a way for publishers to grant non-commercial lending rights to libraries through a licensing framework. “Explicitly modeled on Creative Commons licenses with a similar eye towards simplicity and granularity,” Library Licenses could be constructed in several different ways. The most simple example is a straightforward grant, where libraries could acquire and then lend ebooks after they had been on the market for a period of time ranging from instantaneous to some number of years. See article by Kenny Whitebloom and the project's website.

PrivacyCommission proposes a comprehensive reform of the data protection rules

The European Commission has proposed a comprehensive reform of the EU's 1995 data protection rules to strengthen online privacy rights and boost Europe's digital economy. A single law will do away with the current fragmentation and costly administrative burdens, leading to savings for businesses of around €2.3 billion a year. The initiative will help reinforce consumer confidence in online services, providing a much needed boost to growth, jobs and innovation in Europe. See website of European Commission.

Enter do-not-track (DNT) standard.

Neelie Kroes hopes that a standard known as “do not track” (DNT) will have a big role to play for the future of online privacy. Do Not Track is a technology and policy proposal that enables users to opt out of tracking by websites they do not visit, including analytics services, advertising networks, and social platforms. See Neelie Kroes' blog and the website of the project;

Google changes its privacy policy

With the new policy in place, Google is taking a more proactive approach towards getting “more relevant results.” With that blanket policy, users will be treated as a single user across all Google services. See article at The Next Web.

Open Standards and antitrustiBooks Author EULA restrictions invite antitrust concerns

Apple's end user license agreement for the iBooks Author app has generated extensive controversy among authors and publishers. Namely, the agreement restricts paid distribution of "works" created with the software to the iBookstore only. See article at Ars Technica, article by Ed Bott and second article by Ed Bott.

Patents and designsIntel to Buy Patents and Next Generation Video Codec Software From RealNetworks

RealNetworks, Inc. announced that it has signed an agreement to sell a significant number of its patents and its next generation video codec software to Intel Corporation for a purchase price of $120 million. Under terms of the sale, RealNetworks retains certain rights to continue to use the patents in current and future products. See RealNetworks' press release.

Opinion: Copyright, Trademark and Patents are Theft

“To be clear, I’m a firm defender of actual property rights, even to an absolutist point. That’s exactly why I oppose the charade known as "intellectual property.” See article at OUDaily;

iPad litigation

Court of Appeal of the Hague rejected Apple's appeal, finding no infringement of their Community Design covering the iPad. On the other hand, Apple just but won part of the case in Germany where Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court upheld a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 on the basis on basis of unfair competition law See article at Class 99 about Dutch litigation and press release of Dusseldorf court (DE).

Free operating systemsHP to release webOS as Free Software by Fall 2012

HP began executing its plan to deliver an open webOS by committing to a schedule for making the platform’s source code available under a Free Software license. The company aims to complete this milestone in its entirety by September. See HP's press release.

About the Free Software Legal NewsNavigation

• Legal News Archive

  Links related to Free Software news are collected, edited and published weekly to help keep track of the important legal issues. We welcome submissions of links by email to legal-news at fsfeurope dot org

• FSFE Legal - The Freedom Task Force

  FSFE is committed to helping individuals, projects, businesses and government agencies find Free Software legal information, experts and support. Our mission is to spread knowledge, solve problems and encourage the long-term growth of Free Software.

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"I love Free Software"-Tag am 14. Februar im Unperfekthaus, Essen

Die Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) ruft jährlich alle Unterstützer Freier Software auf, beim "I love Free Software"-Tag mitzumachen. Dazu gibt es eine Mitmach-Kampagne, zu der ihr Material und Ideen auf ilovefs.org finden könnt. Dieses Jahr wird es außerdem erstmalig eine "I love Free Software"-Veranstaltung[2] "I love Free Software"-Veranstaltung im Unperfekthaus in der Innenstadt Essens geben.

Die Veranstaltung soll ein Vergnügen für die ganze Familie - von klein bis groß - ermöglichen, in dem der Austausch und Input zu und über Freie Software gefördert wird. Es gibt dazu Workshops und Vorträge, Darstellende Kunst und am Abend ein Live-Konzert mit IntroVagant, KIT, /angstalt/ und fukked-up. Alle weiteren Informationen dazu gibt es auf der Veranstaltungsseite.

Um zu der Veranstaltung vorzudringen, muss man den handelsüblichen Eintritt für das Unperfekthaus bezahlen. Dafür hat man aber auch vollen Zugang zu allen Annehmlichkeiten, die das Unperfekthaus sonst so bietet. Um zu der Veranstaltung vorzudringen, muss man den handelsüblichen Eintritt für das Unperfekthaus bezahlen. Dafür hat man aber auch vollen Zugang zu allen Annehmlichkeiten, die das Unperfekthaus sonst so bietet. Die FSFE will mit dieser Veranstaltung möglichst viele Anwender, Entwickler und Unterstützer Freier Software zusammen bringen und mit ihnen gemeinsam feiern. Sowohl jung wie alt, weiblich wie männlich, Profis wie Einsteiger; alle sind mit Freunden und Bekannten eingeladen. Wenn ihr noch eine Idee für die Veranstaltung habt, meldet euch unter fellowship@fsfeurope.org – jede Idee ist willkommen.

Die FSFE freut sich wenn Sie unsere Veranstaltung oder ihre Teilnahme über Microblogs, Blogs oder sozialen Netzwerken ankündigen. Dabei gibt es auch etwas zu gewinnen: Die FSFE verlost zwei Schlafplätze vom 14. auf den 15. Februar im Unperfekthaus in einer 16er WG - zusammen mit den auftretenden Bands und den Veranstaltern der FSFE. Wer kommen möchte und sein kommen über eine beliebige Social-Media- Plattform mit dem Tag #ilovefs ankündigt, der kann einen der beiden Schlafplätze gewinnen. Schicken Sie dazu einfach eine Mail an fellowship@fsfeurope.org mit einem Link zu Ihrer Ankündigung. Die Gewinner werden unter allen Einsendern verlost.

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Election period for a Fellowship seat in the GA in February

During the whole of February 2012, FSFE's Fellows will be able to elect their representative in FSFE's General Assembly. The winner of the election will help FSFE's strategic decision making body plan the future of the organisation, and will join Hugo Roy who occupies the other Fellowship seat since 2011. Both Fellowship representatives are full members of the General Assembly for a term of two years, and have all the rights and obligations of other members.

• Who can vote? All registered Fellows can vote.
• Election Platform All candidates will use the wiki and/or their blogs as a promotion platform, so that all Fellows can learn more about them.
• Voting System For the voting process we will use the Schulze method, a popular voting system used by Debian, Wikimedia and others. It is a well tested method and has proven to be resistant to voting anomalies.

All candidates who registered by the January 25th deadline are listed on the 2012 election website. Fellows will receive an e-mail to their [login]@fsfe.org e-mail alias. In that message, the voting URL and all other necessary information is included. If you have questions, please contact the Fellowship team.

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Call for Street Art Artists

On 28th of March 2012, we will be running a campaign for document liberation - Document Freedom Day 2012. On this occasion, we would like to ask you for help in promoting its underlying idea by means of your art.

DFD is a worldwide event celebrating Open Standards and raising general awareness about their importance for our daily lives. One of the most obvious effects of their opposites, the closed and proprietary standards, is so called vendor lock-in. Vendor lock-in makes you as a customer dependent on a vendor whose products and services you use. This dependency makes you potential slave of the product you buy. Imagine that in twenty years you won´t be able to read your documents just because you did not use open standard. Sounds unrealistic? Libraries all over the world can not open and read millions of works because respective closed standards are not technically supported anymore.

Moreover, Open Standards are essential for interoperability. In 2004, during the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the rescue operators of different countries were unable to exchange information about the ongoing operations, because they all used different closed formats of documents. This massively slowed down and complicated the coordination of rescue actions. Lots of human lives were put into danger just because vendors did not care about use of open standards in their products. And this is just one example.

You can change all of this if you distribute our message further. There are endless ways how your street art could promote open standards. Think for a while about daily examples, funny or shocking ones, which could be portrayed on the street, and than take an action. It does not require a lot, just use your imagination. Afterward, take picture of what you have created and send it to us, so we can promote your work around the world. And who knows, you might inspire other artists and your work will became viral.

Use your creativity and help us promote Open Standards!

Contact us today at contact (at) documentfreedom (dot) org

More about DFD 2012 at DocumentFreedom.org

Your DFD Team

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A short post in French on the Mozilla Public License 2.0. If you want to know about it, you can read in English Luis Villa, who led the update process. Richard Fontana wrote an article (RedHat); and the FSF has lauded the compatibility with GNU licenses.)

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Free Software legal news

Read about launch of cloud computing interoperability intitiative, US Supreme Court decision on copyright extension, plan of Spanish region to use 40.000 Linux based desktops, patent inflation and more.

Quick Navigation: › Antitrust concerns › Copyright and the Public Domain › IT Public Policy ›  patents and copyright litigations › Business and markets

Antitrust concernsUEFI and bugs

The fundamental problem is that UEFI is a lot of code. And I really do mean a lot of code. Ignoring drivers, the x86 Linux kernel is around 30MB of code. A comparable subset of the UEFI tree is around 35MB. UEFI is of a comparable degree of complexity to the Linux kernel. See article by Matthew Garrett;

Apple's iBooks Author EULA restrictions invite antitrust concerns

Forcing users to sell content through the iBookstore, governed by a separate contract with its own terms, might not survive an antitrust challenge in court if it were to come up. See article at Ars Technica;

Copyright and the Public DomainUS Supreme Court: Copyright can be extended to foreign works once in public domain

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Congress’s right to extend copyright protection to millions of books, films and musical compositions by foreign artists that once were free for public use. See article at Washingtonpost, article by Tyler Ochoa and text of decision;

IT Public PolicyACTA Makes Its Way to the EU Parliament

After the huge online protests against the extremist SOPA and PIPA copyright bills discussed in the United States, the EU Parliament starts working on their global counterpart: ACTA, the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement. Citizens across Europe must push back against this illegitimate agreement bound to undermine free speech online, access to knowledge and innovation worldwide. See article at La Quadrature du Net, article at Siliconrepublic and article at Forbes;

Measures Governments Can Use to Promote Free Software

This article suggests policies for a strong and firm effort to promote free software within the state, and to lead the rest of the country towards software freedom. See article by Richard Stallman;

Why we need a sound Do-Not–Track standard for privacy online

A blog post on how Neelie Kroes want to ensure privacy and user control when you’re browsing online. See article by Neelie Kroes;

Extremadura CIO plans Linux rollout on 40,000 desktops

The CIO of Spanish autonomous region Extremadura says it is planning to move the administration's 40,000 desktop systems to a Debian distribution. See article at H-Online;

Software patents and copyright litigationsKodak declares bankruptcy, presses on with patent suits, digital strategy

Eastman Kodak, after 120 years in business, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today. It may not be surprising, given the way today's digital technologies are making photographic film a relic. But Kodak says it has a plan to rebuild, based heavily both on its own patent portfolio and its own digital technologies. See article at Ars Technica and article at the Economist;

Israel to recognize software patents

The Israeli patent registrar have reverted previous ruling regarding patents on software and published a draft for the procedures to accept such patents. The procedures are open to public comments for the next 30 days. See article by Lior Kaplan and relevant documents;

Paper: Patent Inflation

Because the PTO will grant nearly any plausible patent, the vast majority of rejected applications that are appealed to the Federal Circuit will concern boundary-pushing inventions that are unpatentable under current law. Occasionally, a particularly patent-friendly panel of Federal Circuit judges will elect to reverse the PTO and grant a patent that the Agency has denied. The Federal Circuit’s decision will create a new, inflationary precedent. See article at The Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom and paper by professor Jonathan Masur;

Trial delayed in Oracle's Android lawsuit against Google

Judge William Alsup decided to delay the trial until Oracle can propose a reasonable methodology for measuring the damages. See article at Ars Technica and article at Groklaw;

Business and marketsHow China Ate Android

Sony Ericsson posted an atrocious 4Q11 handset performance, extending the losing streak of Android vendors. This wasn’t expected to be a stellar quarter for SE, but the numbers are way below expectations – handset volumes dropped by 20% YoY. See article at Forbes;

Survey: 80% Linux-using enterprises will increase Linux use

Almost 80% of enterprises that use Linux will be increasing their use of Linux over the next five years, and 84% of them increased their Linux use in the past year, despite the economic climate. More of these companies will be reducing the number of Windows servers they use (25.9%) than increasing them (21.7%) too. See article at H-Online;

Samsung says no final decision on bada/Tizen merge

According to reports, Samsung has been contacting sites such as AllThingsD to say that a "final decision" regarding a merger of its proprietary bada mobile operating system and the Meego/Samsung Linux Project blend Tizen, has not yet been made.See article at H-Online;

OASIS launches cloud interoperability initiative

The Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) has launched a new standards initiative to enhance the portability of cloud applications. The aim of the Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) project is to create a standard for interoperable cloud platforms.See article at H-Online and wiki of cloud computing standards;

World IPv6 Launch on 6 June

The Internet Society is organising World IPv6 Launch for 6 June 2012, when participating internet service providers, network equipment manufacturers and other service providers will permanently enable IPv6 on their connections, devices and services. See article at H-Online;

About the Free Software Legal NewsNavigation

• Legal News Archive

  Links related to Free Software news are collected, edited and published weekly to help keep track of the important legal issues. We welcome submissions of links by email to legal-news at fsfeurope dot org

• FSFE Legal - The Freedom Task Force

  FSFE is committed to helping individuals, projects, businesses and government agencies find Free Software legal information, experts and support. Our mission is to spread knowledge, solve problems and encourage the long-term growth of Free Software.

Support FSFE, join the Fellowship
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The Free Software Foundation Europe plans to celebrate Valentine's Day on 14th February as an "I love Free Software" - Day. Please help us in showing your support for Free Software by participating in our online campaign. Emails, blogs, microblogs, donations, everything is welcome! There are free banners to use for your website available, too. In addition, this year will also be an event to celebrate Free Software in the Unperfekthaus in Essen. We would love to see you there!

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For our January fellowship interview we met Heiki Ojasild. He joined the Free Software Foundation Europe in 2011, undertaking the task of translating fsfe.org into Estonian, his mother tongue. He is currently developing an XChat add-on, as well as a website for free SVG and JavaScript games. In 2010 he took part in the Baltic Olympiad in Informatics. In this interview, he explains us his views about copyright, Digital Restrictions Management, kopimism, and activism.

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Free Software legal news

Read about European concerns with SOPA, dangers of Secure Boot, Nokia's move to sell 450 patents to a patent troll, summary of Free Software developments in 2011, web blocking in Germany and many more.

European concerns with SOPA

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that is currently pending in the US House of Representatives, raise considerable controversy beyond the national territory. How does it effect or already effected European countries? See article at Kluwer Copyright Blog and artcile at IEEE Spectrum;

Secure Boot Dangers

The question of whether Secure Boot technology in UEFI firmware could exclude Linux from PCs running Windows 8 has taken a fresh twist. See article at the Register, article by Matthew Garrett, article by Glyn Moody and our petition here;

German court ruled against web blocking

If we learned anything this week, it was that European courts are coming down increasingly hard on websites that facilitate the sharing of illegal ‘pirated’ content. But for those that believe in an open, uncensored Internet, news that a German court has ruled against ordering Internet service providers (ISPs) to block such websites will be welcomed. See article at TNW, press release (DE) and similar older decision here (DE);

Nokia sells over 450 patents to a patent troll

Nokia sold a group of more than 450 patents and applications to the Luxembourg-based patent licensing firm Sisvel International, Reuters reports. The patents mostly involved wireless technology.See article at Forbes and article at IntoMobile;

Canonical to Offer Genivi Compliant Linux Automotive Infotainment Solution

Canonical and AllGo Embedded Systems today announced the availability of their Linux In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) solution that combines AllGo's IVI Middleware solution RACE with Canonical's Genivi compliant Ubuntu IVI Remix operating system. Together the solution provides advanced features for next generation connected car platforms like personal cloud services based on Ubuntu One, smartphone and tablet Integration in the car and location-based services.See article at Market Watch;

AT&T Joins OpenStack

While there are a number of Free Software solutions emerging for cloud computing, OpenStack remains one of the best backed platforms, with vendors ranging from Hewlett-Packard to Dell to Citrix supporting it. OpenStack got its early momentum from Rackspace and NASA, though, and late last year Rackspace announced Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition, which is an OpenStack-powered cloud platform featuring managed services and--most important of all--operational support. Now, AT&T has announced that it is delivering Free Software cloud platform based on OpenStack.See article at OSTATIC and article at Pc World;

Free Software 2011 and 2012

Year 2011, was one of the most active years in legal developments in FOSS. What happend and what should it do in 2012? See article at Law & Life Silicon Valley and article by Glyn Moody;

Equal legal standing for Free Software

Free Software has thrived despite the absence of any legal recognition by the law, if not in spite of rules that clearly are shaped around proprietary software. In many jurisdictions it has passed the enforceability test. So, no laws seem necessary to make it work. Yet, can some legal principle be put forward, and included in some laws, to help? See article by Carlo Piana;

Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia - but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality. See article by Thom Holwerda;

Intel bets big on Android

Intel has gone beyond simply dropping new hardware into an otherwise-similar device. The company has put dedicated resources into software, too.. See article at TNW;

German cities following Munich's Free Software example

Municipal administrations in Germany are starting to follow the example of the city of Munich, and increase their use of free and Free Software software. Cities of Freiburg and Jena are examples of city administrations following Munich's lead. See article at TNW;

Trial delayed in Oracle's Android lawsuit against Google

A pretrial order issued earlier this month indicated that Oracle's lawsuit against Google would likely head to a jury trial in March. In a new filing, Judge William Alsup decided to delay the trial until Oracle can propose a reasonable methodology for measuring the damages. See article at Ars Technica;

"An Free Software World"? Where's The Free Software?

If we are to believe the early signs, 2012 may well be the year that British schools finally start to address the continuing shame that is ICT teaching. As I and many others have noted, the current approach essentially consists of sitting people in front of Microsoft Word and Excel and making them learn a couple of commands on the menus. See article by Glyn Moody;

Cloud Computing and Data protection reform

The Commission will propose a reform of the current 15-year-old framework in a few weeks. The main issues were already clearly flagged in the Commission communication just over a year ago. See article by Neelie Kroes;

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Together with dozens of other civil society organisations, FSFE has signed a letter to US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging the Senate to stand up for human rights, defend freedom of speech and the open internet, and reject the SOPA and PIPA proposals currently before it.

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In a reply to the BBC about proposed changes to the national curriculum, Sam Tuke explains some of the ways in which teaching Free Software programming skills in schools is important to the future of Britain.

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FSFE calls for nominations for the Document Freedom Award

This year for the fourth time, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) will assign the Document Freedom Award on the 28th of March 2012. With the Document Freedom Award, the FSFE and the FFII like to honor institutes or enterprises that made an outstanding contribution for the spread and the use of Open Standards. The Document Freedom Award is granted each year during the Document Freedom Day, the international day to celebrate the importance of Open Standards

Previous prize winners of the Document Freedom Award have been in 2008 the Auswärtige Amt (German Federal Foreign Office) for its former reorganization and the use of the Open Document Format (ODF), in 2010 the Deutschlandradio for offering Ogg-Vorbis-Streams and in 2011 the Tagesschau webpage for offering its videos in the OGG Theora Format.

This year the FSFE offers the possibility to everyone to nominate his or her candidate for the Document Freedom Award. If you know an institution or an enterprise that stands out for his use and implementation of Open Standards, please send an email - including your reasons - at the latest by the 1st of February to germany@fsfeurope.org.

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FSFE calls for an amendment of Slovak Copyright Act

FSFE calls for an amendment that would eventually enable Free Software and Creative Commons licenses for Slovak citizens. Currently, these licenses are considered to be void due to lack of their written form and problems with formation of the contract. Slovakia is thus one of a few countries where these popular licensing tools still struggle with rigid legislative framework.

support letters

Dear Mr /Mrs,

We would like to express our sincere appreciation for your current legislative proposal for modernization of the Slovak Copyright Act towards Creative Commons, GNU GPL and other licenses. Having followed your initiative, we are very sorry to learn that it was recently stoped in the Slovak parliament. We hope that this will not discouragge you from proposing the same piece of legislation after the next parliamentary elections in March 2012.

There are many reasons why we believe this is important for Slovakia and its citizens. First of all, current legislative framework in Slovakia is being left far beyond the digital age.Authors of copyrighed works, including creators of computer software,generally suffer from great uncertainaty when it comes to licensing of their works online. This eventually weakens any authority of the copyright protection in the eyes of gerneral public and leads to nearly zero enforcement. Secondly, current status quo enourmously restricts the freedom of the authors to decide how and under which conditions they can distribute their works. Today, thousands of Slovaks are left without any possibility of benefiting from licenses such as GNU GPL, GNU LGPL, other Free Software licenses or Creative Commons, which would enable worldwide distribution of their works, knowledge and expertize. This is despite the fact that Slovaks are enthusiastic users of GNU GPL licensed software and Creative Commons licensed works. In fact, we believe that nobody benefits from the Copyright Act as it stands today.

Therefore, we support the legislative initiative taken by you. Your effort is of a great importance to all Slovaks. We hope that soon after the elections we could see from you another legislative proposal challenging this problems. We will be closely following your work. If we can be of assistance in regard to Free Software licensing, please let us know.

Best Regards,

Email addresses of Slovak MPs here; Scaned copies of our letters here;

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Free Software legal news

Read about the release of Mozilla Publice License 2.0, new litigation of Microsoft against a computer retailer who is providing recovery CDs, UK government´s shift from Open Stadards and more.

Mozilla Public License 2.0 Released

Mozilla has announced the release of the Mozilla Public License 2.0. The new version provides for compatibility with the Apache and GPL licenses, improved patent protections and recent changes in copyright law.See article at Slashdot, MPL 2.0 wording here;

Comet face Microsoft action

British electrical and computer retailer Comet Group is facing proceedings from Microsoft for allegedly creating and selling more than 94,000 sets of counterfeit Windows Vista and Windows XP recovery CDs which were then sold to customers who had purchased Windows-loaded PCs. See article at the 1709 Blog;

UK withdrew its open standards policy

The British government withdrew its open standards policy after lobbying from Microsoft, it has been revealed in a Cabinet Office brief leaked to Computer Weekly. See article by Glyn Moody;

Microsoft to buy Nokia smartphone division?

Microsoft is in talks to buy Nokia’s smartphone division, Nokia’s long-term scourge, blogger and industry analyst Eldar Murtazin announced on Twitter, claiming to have the inside track on the deal.See article at GlobalPost;

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FSFE calls for an amendment that would eventually enable Free Software and Creative Commons licenses for Slovak citizens. Currently, these licenses are considered to be void due to lack of their written form and problems with formation of the contract. Slovakia is thus one of a few countries where these popular licensing tools still struggle with rigid legislative framework. If you also feel that another 5 million Europeans should have this option, please support our action and write members of Slovak parliament (regardless of your residence). Explain them what is your experience with Free Software or just reuse our letter.

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FSFE Newsletter - January 2012Preventing 6000 mines against Free Software?

Competition authorities are investigating the sale of 6000 patents from Nortel, a bankrupt telecommunications equipment manufacturer, to a consortium of Apple, Microsoft and four other companies.

FSFE considers it a serious risk to competition in the mobile technology space, and Free Software as a whole, if those companies acquire these patents. Soon after the sale, we approached EU and US competition authorities, and in September submitted a summary of our concerns.

80 billion EUR for R&D: What will we get?

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. FSFE will continue to engage with the European institutions in order to support the development of Horizon 2020 in the interest of Europe's citizens.

Free Software makes German Parliament more secure

On the request of some members of parliament, the German Bundestag's IT-department now supports GnuPG, so members of the parliament have the option to set this up and receive encrypted and signed e-mails. The president of the German City Council and Munich's main mayor Ude wrote to the EU-Commissioner Neelie Kroes that she should support Open Standards and Free Software.

Those are nice examples where politicians understand the advantages of Free Software and also act upon this knowledge. We want more politicians with this knowledge. One concrete activity is our "ask your candidates campaign", where we send out questions to the political parties before elections, and then evaluate the answers. This year we did so for elections in Vienna/Austria, Switzerland, and 5 federal state elections in Germany.

Something completely different

• In the dispute between the companies AVM and Cybits the written reasoning of the decision of the Regional Court of Berlin is now available. The court confirmed FSFE's view that users of GNU GPLed software are allowed to modify and install it even if it is shipped as a part of an embedded device's firmware.
• 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.
• In this month Fellowship interview Chris talked with Paul Boddie, who has been working with Python since 1995, and from 2006 to 2010 was involved in organising the annual EuroPython conference, administering various conference-related tools and developing the conference website.
• An important decision of the Court of Justice of EU, AG's opinion in awaited European interoperability ruling, two software patent cases and much more is to be found in our legal news.
• We are preparing for Document Freedom Day 2012. The website was updated, on the mailing list we are discussing new ideas, and you are welcome to join.
• From the Fellowship planet aggregation:
  • So what might Digital Sustainability be? Read Georg Greve's explanation about it.
  • Want to see a quadrocopter and other pictures from the Chaos Communication Camp? Take a look at Florian's blog article.
  • What do nerds drink? Michael Stehmann answers this question in his article about the "Chaosvillage" in Düsseldorf.
  • Patrik from our Swedish team writes about awk filtering and counting.
  • Our translator Heiki Ojasild thinks about the question what to translate and what not to translate?

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Not everybody understands Free Software, and not everybody likes that FSFE works hard on promoting Free Software to enlarge the freedom in our society. If you understand that Free Software is important in order to cope with the upcoming challenges for free society, please support us financially by becoming a Fellow of FSFE.

Since December it is possible to donate your contribution yearly or monthly by credit card, direct debit, and other means. Every small donation helps us to continue to be an independent and critical voice for Free Software advocacy for another year.

Thanks to all the Fellows and donors who enable our work,
Matthias Kirschner - FSFE

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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.

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Free Software legal news

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.

Apple using patents to undermine open standards

Apply uses three registered patents and one patent application to threaten to block the W3C Standard.See article at MyOpera;

Microsoft welcomes Free Software to Win8 store

Applications released under a license from the Open Source Initiative (e.g. GPL, Apache) are being now welcomed by Microsoft into the Windows 8 Windows Store. See article at ExtremeTech and at The Register;

Motorola Mobility wins German patent suit against Apple

The Mannheim Regional Court rendered its ruling on one of the patent infringement lawsuits Motorola Mobility brought against Apple in Germany. The ruling includes an injunction that is preliminarily enforceable in exchange for a €100 million ($134 million) bond. Concerned patent relates to "method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system". See article by FOSS Patents blog;

Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute

Koha is a free library management system. This software has been the subject of an ongoing fight with a US company called LibLime; it seems that LibLime now thinks it is entitled to a trademark on the Koha name in New Zealand. See article at LWN.net;

Censorship in Name of Copyright Violates Fundamental Rights

The Court ruled that forcing Internet service providers to monitor and censor their users' communications violated EU law, and in particular the right to freedom of communication. See article by La Quadrature du Net;

Liberation by software

Power has long been able to control the media. But the free software movement enables a radically democratic future. Which way the network behaves is determined solely by the software that comprises it. Freedom of the press, freedom of information, freedom of thought itself are now "implemented" rather than "declared", "protected" or "guaranteed". See article by Eben Moglen in the Guardian;

Creating New Property Rights on the Basis of General Legal Concepts

In two cases recently decided by two different senates of the German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH), the following issue was raised: To what extent can the filming of sports events organized by someone else, on the one hand, and the photographing of someone else’s physical property, on the other hand, be legally controlled by the organizer of the sports event and the owner of the property respectively? See article by Prof. Dr. Thomas Dreier in the JIPITEC;

Advocate General favours interoperability in Europe

The Opinion of Advocate General Bot in SAS v World Programming, the case before the Court of Justice of European Union, has now been published. It seems to favour World Programming and interoperability. See article at Technollama;

US Supreme Court Case Could Affect Developers' Secondary Patent Liability

The United States Supreme Court will decide a case this term that could determine whether free software developers are liable for patent infringement by users of their software See article at Software Freedom Law Center;

For previous Free Software legal news please consult blog of Matija Šuklje and blog of Hugo Roy.

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