Free Software Foundation Fundraiser

Its a worthy cause and you use more Free Software than you know…

The nonprofit 501(c)3 Free Software Foundation is running its annual fundraiser. The FSF publishes, maintains and updates the GPL free software licenses, maintains and publishes several critical free software projects, and performs advocacy, lobbying and litigation in support of the idea of user-modifiable, freely copyable software. I’ve been an annual donor to the FSF for many years and I’ve worked alongside of them at various policy bodies, from the UN to regional governments, to shape treaties, standards and laws.

Join with over 3,000 active members in 48 countries, representing a diverse membership of computer users, software engineers, hackers, students, and freedom activists.When you sign up as a member, you join an informed society working together to make a better world: one respectful of individual freedoms, rights, and privacy, built on free software.

Welcome to a society for free software advocates, supporting the ethical cause of computer user freedom!

FSCONS & Free Beer

Today was the pre-launch of FSCONS and it’s soon time for the registration and social event. During the social event there will be Free Beer – free as in libre!

Here is an excerpt from wikipedia

Free Beer, formerly known as Vores Øl, Danish for Our Beer, is the first brand of beer with a “free” recipe – free as in “freedom”, taken after the term “free software”. The name “Free Beer” is a play on Richard Stallman’s common explanation that free software is “free as in speech, not free as in beer.” The recipe is published under a Creative Commons license, specifically the Attribution-ShareAlike license.

The beer was created by students at the IT-University in Copenhagen together with Superflex, a Copenhagen-based artist collective, to illustrate how concepts of the free software movement might be applied outside the digital world.

FSCONS and Skolelinux

The FSCONS conference was really good. I managed to speak to many interesting people and my presentation turned into a very good interactive discussion with the audience. The only thing that is wrong is that I am unable to attend the second day which is today. The reason for this is that my grandmother is 90. This is a birthday that cannot be missed so I am on the train to Stockholm.

As part of the FSCONS the Free Software Foundation Europe created and handed out the first Free Software Scandinavian Award. Since I was on the award committee I know first hand how interesting reviewing and discussing Free Software projects and initiatives can be. Here is the press release about the award which went to the excellent Norwegian project Skolelinux:

Free Software Foundation Europe is proud to announce that the Norwegian project Skolelinux is the winner of the first Free Software Scandinavian Award handed out at during the Free Software Conference Scandinavia 2007 in Göteborg friday 2007-12-07.

Skolelinux has under a long period of time worked hard to promote the use of Free Software as well as the use of free and open standards and file formats. By using low cost or spare hardware, schools and other public institutions can find a free and cheap IT solution made to meet their needs.

Skolelinux captures a big part of the free software spirit; sharing and reusing. By focusing on schools, Skolelinux makes sure students, tomorrow’s computer users, and decision makers, can grow up in a spirit of sharing, reusing and learning from family, friends and neighbours.

The goals of Skolelinux are to:

* Provide a complete software solution using free software tailored for the needs and use-cases in educational scenarios.

* Pre-configured for easy installation (standalone, as well as network-wide roll out).

* Easy to use, maintain, and administer.

* Supporting your native language.

* Classify and package all free software related to education.

* Write documentation to describe how to use the various software (in an educational context).

* International availability, currently being translated into more than 50 languages.

Skolelinux has combined important, and dedicated work contributions with technical knowledge and political skills.

The adoption of Skolelinux in so many countries around the globe shows that the use of Free Software and open standards has really been spreading in a very positiv way.

The next milestone is that we are now seeing the merge of different school systems based on Free Software. The largest example is the merge between Skolelinux and the very successful Spanish GNU/LinEx project which has at the moment more than 250.000 users and 80.000 work stations in use in schools in Extremadura. The one laptop for every two pupils project.

Both Skolelinux and the GNU/LinEx buildts on Debian GNU/Linux and can enjoy the many synergy effects.

By focusing on schools the Skolelinux project shows by example how Free Software can be used. The jury finds this strategy important for the continued use of free and open standards.

Short about Skolelinux:

GNU/Linux in Schools

Skolelinux is free, stable, future secured, sustainable, and is upgraded frequently

– no license problems
– easy and time saving administration
– security updates are made quickly available
– simple system updating
– good administration of the software packets
– older PC ‘s can be used as thin clients
– no dependence on commercial interests/vendor lock in

About the leadership:
———————
The Skolelinux project has “doer democracy” which means that the active persons decide! The merit lies in your contributions not in your title.

The free, open source code in the project is very valuable because the source code is available making it is easy to change and
customize. This is illustrated by the many languages that are being supported. In a digitalized world it is important for the survival of the cultures that even small national languages are being actively supported.

The collaboration platform:
—————————
The Skolelinux version 3.0r1 is now available. There has been a valuable collaboration between the following countries: Germany, Spain , France, Greece and Norway. Lately also with a Canadian School project.

For some years now there have been regular meetings between different free software school systems and projects. The reason being to share cool applications and avoid double work. A win-win situation for all.

Congratulations again to Skolelinux. We wish you continued growths and success.

The Scandinavian Free Software Award
————————————

The Scandinavian Free Software Award has been designed for Nordic citizens, projects or organizations that make an outstanding contribution to the Free Software movement. Free Software projects, efforts, achievements of all kinds – including work done by Nordic citizens which has had a large effect in other parts of the world are eligible to be nominated. It is the aim of FSCONS 2007 that this award becomes an annual event.

Jury 2007:

The jury is compiled by Nordic citizens only. This year the members are:

– Anne Østergaard (Gnome Foundation, Denmark)
– Henrik Sandklef (FSFE, Sweden)
– Jonas Öberg (FSFE, Sweden)
– Marcus Rejås (FSFE, Sweden)
– Mathias Klang (FSFE, Sweden)
– Petter Reinholdtsen (NUUG, Norway)

Here is the complete list of nominated projects.

The gang was all there

Today began with the really early train (6 am) to Stockholm since I had to be in there at 9 am to make a presentation at the Internet days an event organized by the Swedish IIS. My track was an e-government track but my presentation was on e-democracy and the way in which the citizen is forgotten in the rush to implement technology with the goal of making bureaucracy more efficient. My main gripe is the use of the word democracy when in actuality the goal is efficient bureaucracy.

The presentation went well and woke several questions among the listeners but it is doubtful whether an audience focused on bureaucracy really wanted to hear about democracy – but on the other hand it democracy is never wrong.

After the presentation I had an interesting (but brief) discussion with Rolf Berndtson  from Dataföreningen (always interesting and insightful) and at lunch I met Désirée Liljevall and Eliza Roszkowska Öberg two politicians with a special interest in IT. Other people there were Johan Schiff who was there as a representative for the newly launched Swedish Wikimedia Foundation. Naturally the gang from FSFE (Jonas Öberg, Henrik Sandklef & Irina Dzhambazova) were there, and I also said a quick “Hi” to Helena Andersson from the IT law department at Stockholm University, saw Nicklas Lundblad (Nicklas I cannot find your blog anymore – where are you?) but missed the opportunity to talk to him (shame), so the whole thing was a very friendly and familiar affair.

Then it was a brisk walk to the train to Lund where I shall be until Thursday morning when it’s off to Stockholm give a lecture and then back to Göteborg for the weekend. Ah, my train-setting lifestyle…

Free Software, Social Innovation

As a part of the STACS-project the Free Software Foundation Europe and M6-IT are organizing an event at The Hub in London.

The idea is to invite NGO’s to a show and tell session on the way in which Free Software functions. The idea is that the organizations will see the advantage of Free Software and bring it into their organizations and influence other organizations.

From the website:

We understand that not everyone will be able to cover the costs of visiting the event and we are willing to contribute towards travel and accommodation costs. We invite you to fill out an application by the 19th of October 2007 at the latest. The selected attendees will be contacted by the 22nd of October.
Venue

The Hub is an incubator for social innovation. It’s a place for people to meet, learn and connect with each other to make things happen. The Hub in London is located on 5 Torrens Street which is conveniantly close to the tube station Angel on the Underground Northern Line.

Schedule: Friday 2nd November
09.00 Free Software as a Social Innovation
10.30 Coffee/tea break
11.00 Empowering NGOs with Free Software
12.30 Lunch
14.00 Hands-on experience with Free Software
16.00 Coffee/tea break
16.30 Hands-on continued..
18.00 Social event and dinner

The number of participants is limited and the last date to apply is on the 19th October. For more information and applications go here.

GPLv3 Resources

Today is the official release of the GPLv3 license by the Free Software Foundation. This is a major event within the software community yet at the same time there are many who do not understand the purpose, point and meaning of the GPL so it’s time for a refresher course.

From the GPLv3 Press collection you can read about the purpose and meaning of free software, the relationship between GNU and Linux and the important difference between free software and “open source”.

On 1 April 2007 Richard Stallman gave a speech on the GPLv3 in Brussels you can listen to it here in Ogg/Vorbis. In the summer of 2006 Eben Moglen gave a talk in Barcelona discussing the wording of the changes in version 3 (listen in Ogg/Vorbis).

Personal Notes has collected great links about the GPLv3

So to begin withâ?¦Why would someone need or want to upgrade from the GPLv2 to the GPLv3? Let the person who started it all to explain why :)

Here there’s a really nice and clear A&Q ‘session’ on GPLv3 wrote by Luis Villa and divided in 3 blog entries (probably more to come):

Groklaw, as usual, is an incredible source of interesting material:

GPLv3 to launch on Friday

The Free Software Foundation have announced that version 3 of the GPL will be officially launched on Friday. Here is the announcement.

On Friday, June 29, at 12 noon (EDT), the Free Software Foundation will officially release the GNU GPL version 3. Please join us in celebration as we bring to a close eighteen months of public outreach and comment, in revision of the world’s most popular free software license.

Beyond the creation of an improved license, the process of drafting version 3 has helped highlight vital issues for the community of free software users. This is a moment to thank the thousands who participated by commenting on the license, and those that represented stakeholders through the GPLv3 committee process.

Now with the release of GPLv3, we will see new defenses extended to free software. These defenses will continue the long history of fighting all efforts to make free software proprietary.

Please join us as we stream live footage of Richard Stallman announcing GPLv3 from Noon (EDT) at www.fsf.org.

If you are in the Boston area you can also join us at the FSF offices from 11:30am. Please let us know at <info@fsf.org> if you would like to attend.

Six questions about open standards

The question of open standards is a challenging and important one. Unfortunately most people tend to lose interest very quickly when standards are being discussed.

The FSFE has presented six questions which national standardisation bodies should ask before adopting the ECMA/MS-OOXML format as an IEC/ISO standard. Unless a national standardisation body has conclusive and affirmative answers to all of them, it should vote no in IEC/ISO and request that Microsoft incorporate its work on MS-OOXML into ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (Open Document Format).

1. Application independence?

No standard should ever depend on a certain operating system, environment or application. Application and implementation independence is one of the most important properties of all standards.

Is the MS-OOXML specification free from any references to particular products of any vendor and their specific behaviour?

2. Supporting pre-existing Open Standards?

Whenever applicable and possible, standards should build upon previous standardisation efforts and not depend on proprietary, vendor-specific technologies.

MS-OOXML neglects various standards, such as MathML and SVG, which are recommendations by the W3C, and uses its own vendor-specific formats instead. This puts a substantial burden on all vendors to follow Microsoft in its proprietary infrastructure built over the past 20 years in order to fully implement MS-OOXML. It seems questionable how any third party could ever implement them equally well.

What is the benefit of accepting usage of such vendor-specific formats at the expense of standardisation in these areas? Where will other vendors get competitive, compatible and complete implementations for all platforms to avoid prohibitively large investments?

3. Backward compatibility for all vendors?

One of the alledged main advantages of MS-OOXML is its ability to allow for backward compatibility, as also referenced in the ECMA International press release.

For any standard it is essential that it is implementable by any third party without necessity of cooperation by another company, additional restricted information or legal agreements or indemnifications. It is also essential to not require the cooperation of any competitor to achieve full and comparable interoperability.

On the grounds of the existing MS-OOXML specification, can any third party regardless of business model, without access to additional information and without the cooperation of Microsoft implement full backward compatibility and conversion of such legacy documents into MS-OOXML comparable to what Microsoft can offer?

4. Proprietary extensions?

Proprietary, application-specific extensions are a known technique employed in particular by Microsoft to abuse and leverage its desktop monopoly into neighboring markets. It is a technique at the heart of the abusive behaviour that was at the core of the decision against Microsoft by the European Commission in 2004 and Microsoft is until today continuing its refusal to release the necessary interoperability information.

For this reason, it is common understanding that Open Standards should not allow such proprietary extensions, and that such market-distorting techniques should not be possible on the grounds of an Open Standard.
Does MS-OOXML allow proprietary extensions? Is Microsoft’s implementation of MS-OOXML faithful, i.e. without undocumented extensions? Are there safeguards against such abusive behaviour?

5. Dual standards?

The goal of all standardisation is always to come to one single standard, as multiple standards always provide an impediment to competition. Seeming competition on the standard is truly a strategic measure to gain control over certain segments of a market, as various examples in the past have demonstrated.

There is an existing Open Standard for office documents, namely the Open Document Format (ODF) (ISO/IEC 26300:2006). Both MS-OOXML and ODF are built upon XML technology, so employ the same base technology and thus ultimately have the same theoretical capabilities. Microsoft itself is a member of OASIS, the organisation in which the ODF standard was developed and is being maintained. It was aware of the process and invited to participate.

Why did and does Microsoft refuse to participate in the existing standardisation effort? Why does it not submit its technological proposals to OASIS for inclusion into ODF?

6. Legally safe?

Granting all competitors freedom from legal prosecution for implementation of a standard is essential. Such a grant needs to be clear, reliable and wide enough to cover all activities necessary to achieve full interoperability and allow a level playing field for true competition on the merits.

MS-OOXML is accompanied by an unusually complex and narrow “covenant not to sue” instead of the typical patent grant. Because of its complexity, it does not seem clear how much protection from prosecution for compatibility it will truly provide.

Cursory legal study implies that the covenant does not cover all optional features and proprietary formats mandatory for complete implementation of MS-OOXML. So freedom of implementation by all competitors is not guaranteed for the entire width of the proposed MS-OOXML format, and questionable even for the core components.

Does your national standardisation body have its own, independent legal analysis about the exact nature of the grant to certify whether it truly covers the full spectrum of all possible MS-OOXML implementations?

All these questions should have answers that should be provided by the national standardisation bodies through independent counsel and experts, and in particular not by Microsoft or its business partners, which have a direct conflict of interest on this issue. If there is no good answer to any one of them, a national body should vote no in ISO/IEC.

Affero General Public License

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has released the first discussion draft of the GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL). This new license is based on version 3 of the GNU GPL. It has a new term to ensure that users who interact with the software over a network can receive the source for that program.

The original Affero GPL was intended to guarantee that everyone could receive the source for web applications that they used, so the software could always be shared and improved. The corresponding provision in the GNU AGPL applies this same principle to all software that interacts with users through a network, but doesn’t impose additional requirements when the same code is used for other purposes. Since the GNU AGPL is based on version 3 of the GNU GPL, it will also provide improved internationalization, compatibility with the Apache License, and other
benefits.

As with its other licenses, the FSF will hear feedback on the draft from the public before releasing the final version of the license. The additional provision is in the first paragraph of section 13. We ask that comments not specific to the GNU AGPL be submitted to the latest draft of GPLv3. You can learn more about this draft on the GPLv3 portal at <http://gplv3.fsf.org/agplv3-dd1-guide.html>.