[Fsfe-uk] FSFE Newsletter

[Free Software Foundation Europe]

1. FSFE engages with irregularities in the ISO voting process
2. FTF informal legal network now covers sixteen European countries
3. Two days of Free Software in Chile
4. The Fellowship site now supports multiple languages
5. First distributed Fellowship meeting
6. FSFE German Team at FrOSCon
7. Fellows of the Rhein/Ruhr area holding monthly talks
8. Building the Fellowship in Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Darmstadt and 
Karlsruhe
9. FSFE supports demonstration "liberty instead of fear", September 22nd
10. Speeches about SELF, Open Standards and Free Software in Argentina
11. Free Software and Free Documentation licence consultations


1. FSFE engages with irregularities in the ISO voting process

FSFE has been deeply involved in the ISO voting process on Microsoft's 
Office OpenXML proposal, and has uncovered serious irregularities in 
various national standardisation body's handling of the matter.  These 
irregularities have included committee stacking, conflicts of interest,
concerns raised by parties being ignored, and lack of due consideration
to legal issues like Microsoft's vague 'Open Specification Promise.'  
FSFE president Georg Greve was interviewed by ZDnet regarding the 
international voting process.  In Switzerland, FSFE and the Swiss 
Internet User Group (SIUG) lodged formal objections to the process 
with the national standardisation body, which were later published 
by Groklaw:

 http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39288959,00.htm
 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2007081708383138


2. FTF informal legal network now covers sixteen European countries

FSFE's Freedom Task Force now has connections with lawyers in Austria,
Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Greece, Germany, 
Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the UK.  The network also 
includes legal researchers in Ireland, Serbia and Sweden and legal 
contacts in Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, the USA and Australia.  As 
always, the FTF offers licence consultancy and education, fiduciary 
services and licence enforcement for individuals, projects and 
businesses.  Please help us to continue spreading the word about this
Free Software infrastructure project:

 http://www.fsfeurope.org/ftf
 email: address@hidden


3. Two days of Free Software in Chile

On invitation of the Chilean educational ministry and in coordination
with our sister organisation FSFLA and GNU Chile, FSFE president Georg
Greve spoke at the Universidad Mayor and an event of the educational
ministry in Santiago, as well as the library of the national congress
in Valparaiso. Georg Greve also discussed strategic and practical Free
Software issues with the vice-minister of education and economic impact
of Free Software with the minister of economics.


4. The Fellowship site now supports multiple languages

Thanks to the contributions of Fellow Alejandro Serrano and Ivan Čukić,
with support from other fellowship hackers, fsfe.org now supports 
adding content in other languages besides English. For the moment 
Italian, Spanish and German are supported, but more will come.  Most 
of the work has gone into modifying the standard UI provided by eZ 
Publish and put all the files in a svn repository.  Expect more 
changes and additions in functions during the next weeks.

 http://www.fsfe.org


5. First distributed Fellowship meeting

While the monthly Fellowship meetings in Vienna have become a jour 
fixe in the calendar of many Austrian Fellows, the August meeting was 
special: for the first time, a Fellowship meeting took place in two 
locations at the same time. The net.culture.labs in Vienna and Dornbirn
hosted this event, both connected via videoconferencing over a 
broadband internet line sponsored by Telekom Austria.

 http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/meetings/austria/20070814


6. FSFE German Team at FrOSCon

Thanks to the organisational skills of Michael Kesper, members of the 
FSFE German Team attended FrOSCon (St. Augustin/Germany) on the 25th 
and 26th of August.  Myriam Schweingruber delivered a talk about 
"Women in IT - View points and possible explanations", and Michael 
Kesper discussed interaction with other projects. FSFE maintained a 
booth at the entrance to the fair where ad hoc talks were held and 
FSFE and Fellowship merchandise was available.  

 http://www.froscon.de/


7. Fellows of the Rhein/Ruhr area holding monthly talks

The Fellows of the Rhein/Ruhr area have monthly public meetings with 
talks on the last Wednesday of each month in Duesseldorf. In August, 
Fellow Dr. jur. Michael Stehmann spoke about the new Par.202c in the 
German criminal code which bans possessing, using, publishing and 
distributing so-called "hacker tools". As Michael stated, this 
regulations are very poorly formulated, practically useless in their 
attention, and might be used as a pressure instrument against innocent 
people. 202c tries to define pure ownership of broadly defined network 
analysis tools as the preparation for crime.

 email: address@hidden


8. Building the Fellowship in Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Darmstadt and 
Karlsruhe

As you know FSFE tries to keep in contact with its Fellows and attract 
additional ones. One aspect of this work sees Joachim Jakobs meeting 
with LUGs and other local FS-related groups in between Kaiserslautern
and Heidelberg, Darmstadt and Karlsruhe. Last Friday he met with the 
LUG Landau. Landau is just a small town but nevertheless about a dozen
people attended. If you are interested in helping JJ organise a local 
Fellowship in this area please contact him directly. 

 email: address@hidden


9. FSFE supports demonstration "liberty instead of fear", September 22nd

"Civil rights groups are calling on citizens to join in a protest march 
against excessive surveillance by businesses and governments. On 22 
September 2007 concerned citizens will take to the streets with the 
slogan "Liberty instead of fear - Stop the surveillance mania!". Groups
will initially meet at Pariser Platz (Brandenburger Tor), Berlin, at 
2.30 pm. The German Chapter of FSFE decided to join this demonstration 
and asks everybody for participation. 

 http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/125/116/lang,en/


10. Speeches about SELF, Open Standards and Free Software in Argentina

Before the SELF board meeting in Cordoba, Argentina, to prepare for the
launch of the first version of the SELF platform, FSFE's Georg Greve 
and Jonas Oberg spoke at the Septimas Jornadas Regionales de Software 
Libre, giving talks about SELF, Open Standards, the problems of 
MS-OOXML and the political importance of Free Software:

 http://selfproject.eu


11. Free Software and Free Documentation licence consultations

The public consultations continue for the GNU Free Documentation 
License, the GNU Affero General Public License, and the new GNU 
Simpler Free Documentation License.  We advise you to take a look 
as soon as possible if you might have a comment about these free 
documentation licences or the "Affero" version of the GPL which 
additionally deals with software used over public networks:

 http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html
 http://gplv3.fsf.org/agplv3-dd2-guide.html

Meanwhile, FSFE has been providing ongoing advice about GPLv3 since
it's mid-summer launch.  The lack of controversial news is welcomed as
a sign that broad compromised was indeed reached and no obvious
mistakes were made.



You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html

Copyright (C) FSFE.  Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire 
article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.