GPL

Stallman in Stockholm

On the 26th February at 5.30 pm – the Free Software Foundation Europe, Unionen and the Royal Institute of Technology are offering a lecture by Richard Stallman: The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System

Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement, and the status and history of the GNU operating system, which in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions of users world-wide.

The lecture will take place at: Room F1, KTH, Royal Institute of Technology

Posted on by mklang

Open Office addition

Creative Commons released an Add-in for OpenOffice.org which allows users to select and embed a Creative Commons license in documents. Based on work completed as part of the Google Summer of Code by Cassio Melo, the add-in supports Writer (word processing documents), Calc (spreadsheets) and Impress (presentations).

The Add-in is available without charge, and is licensed under the GNU General Public License. Download information and links to source code.

Posted on by mklang

Free Software Conference

On the 7-8 December Göteborg will be hosting the first Free Software Conference Scandinavia (FSCONS). The event, which is already promising to become an important event on the Free Software calendar, is a good mix of techies and freedom folks.

While the techies will be able to enjoy talks on squid, gtk, GnuTLS and OpenMoko (among others) the non-techies (like myself) will be talking about digital rights, consumer rights, free software licensing & women in IT.

I am looking forward to speaking on the topic of Digital Rights

In an Internet-based participatory democracy we are particularly dependent upon our technological infrastructure. The qualities of digital communication and interaction create a situation where the user is often incapable ensuring the integrity and security of the communications infrastructure. Therefore we are becoming increasingly dependent upon experts to ensure the openness, accessibility and freedom of the infrastructure of our democracy. This session will address the threats and opportunities faced by users in a digital participatory democracy and the steps we need to ensure the openness of digital democracy.

But I am particularly looking forward to listening to (and discussing with) people like Shane Coughlan, Anne Østergaard and Fernanda Weiden. It’s nice to see that events such as this (and the Stallman lecture) are being arranged in my hometown.

Great Work by the tireless Henrik!

Posted on by mklang

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:

Posted on by mklang

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.

Posted on by mklang

GPLv3 Reminder

Since my blogging habit have become more erratic of late I have forgotten to write about stuff that happens. Sorry about this. One important event is the release of the final draft of the GPLv3.

GPLv3

What follows is a brief period for commenting then the draft will get the final and official form and go live.

More info at: FSF official page or Ciaran’s blog (FSFE).

Thanks to Personal Notes for the reminder…

Posted on by mklang

Stallman in Göteborg

This is really cool. Richard Stallman will be giving a lecture in Göteborg in May.

The Free Software Foundation Europe and Göteborg University are pleased to invite you to a lecture with Dr. Richard Stallman:

Free Software and Beyond: Human Rights in the Use of Software and Other Published Works

Dr. Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement: defending essential freedoms for the users of software. In addition, he will address how the ideas of free software do or don’t extend to other kinds of published works. He will also explain what the Pirate Party must change in its program to avoid unintended negative consequences in the software field.

Dr. Stallman is the founder of the GNU project and president of the Free Software Foundation. He has received an honorary doctorate from the Royal Institute of Technology, the University of Glasgow, Free University of Brussels and Universidad Nacional de Salta. In 1990, he was the receiver of a Macarthur foundation fellowship and has been elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The lecture will take place at:

University Aula
Göteborg University
Vasaparken
Göteborg, Sweden

May 16th
From 5pm to 8pm

While the lecture is a public event, and we invite you to forward this invitation to whomever you feel might be interested, we kindly request that in order to participate, you register via http://www.rms2007.se/registrering

Posted on by mklang

Bad Attitude

The blog Bad Vista puts a nice perspective on the difference in attitude between free and proprietary software:

As the GPL preamble says:

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software–to make sure the software is free for all its users.

In contrast, a typical Microsoft Vista EULA says:

The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways.

See the difference in attitude?

Posted on by mklang