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News from the Free Software world in France and FSF France activities
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FSF France press release. Friday November 18th, 2005, French
Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP tell Free Software authors: "You
shall change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing
free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors
who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA
Contents Department"[1] bill pass in the Parliament.
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This is an opinion article published in the French newspaper
Liberation by among other the president of the FSF France. The
text explains what will be the long-term effects for both
parties? Microsoft is clearly looking at increased business
opportunutues while southern countries are facing "negative
consequences".
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The newspaper Liberation published an article, wrote by Daniel
Cohn Bendit (MEP) and Frédéric Couchet (FSF France) about the EU
vs Microsoft case.
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Join in the rally to protect consumer rights to urge the EU
Parliament to REJECT the bloated Intellectual Property Rights
Enforcement Directive or to VOTE for the FIPR/Cappato Amendments
that protect consumers from over-zealous
enforcement of intellectual property rights.
When: Monday, 8 March 2004, between 16:30 - 18:30 (4:30 pm -
6:30 pm) as MEPs enter the Parliament Building for the evening's
debate, on the eve of the final EU Plenary vote.
Where: Immediately outside the EU Parliament Building,
Strasbourg, France
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UNESCO, in close collaboration with APRIL and AFUL, is organising
a conference with Michael Hart. Michael S. Hart, founder of the
Project Gutenberg in 1971, is giving for the first time in
France an exceptionnal lecture, to present the project and its
evolution. He will present a brief history of Project
Gutenberg's efforts to bring electronic libraries to the masses
via a Neo-Industrial Revolution. He will then make predictions
concerning the next decades, including eBooks, eLibraries,
copyright and automated translation : including million eBook
libraries one can carry with a laptop, billions of Internet
users, and the future of copyright and the public domain.
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The European Parliament has voted for legislation that would effectively
exclude software and business methods from patentability. However
European patent legislation is still largely in the hands of ministerial
patent experts, many of whom have for years been pushing for unlimited
patentability. This situation calls for close attention and resolute action
by national parliamentarians and concerned citizens. The Free Software Foundation
France backs officially the FFII's proposals.
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| The First International Free Sofware Contest is
over. On 23th of Mai 2003 in Soissons, the 18 nominees have
received the first "Trophées du Libre". The winners are Koha,
Weasel Reader, Dolibarr, GCompris, Gok and Vega
Strike. |
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| SCO is claiming from IBM [1]
one thousand million dollars on an unfounded basis. SCO is not
trying to get compensation, but to intimidate Free Software
developers and users. The faith in the protection that copyright
grants to Free Software is put to the test. |
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| Software patents and European SME. A conference
organized by the Greens-efa in European Parliament on Thursday
8th of May 2003. With the participation of Daniel Cohn-Bendit,
Philippe Aigrain, Richard Stallman and others
speakers. |
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| Please, visit the FFII page for instructions on
how you can help to reject software patents. |
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| Nevrax, the video game company releasing NeL
under the GNU GPL decided to outsource the Free Software
community management to FSFE France. The fifteen developers
working on NeL at Nevrax will continue to operate under high
pressure to meet their deadlines while FSFE France will be
in charge of connecting them with the Free Software world.
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| The Blender 3D modeller became Free Software
and a conference was organized to celebrate this historical
event. A page shows small round pictures of most people who attented
the conference.
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| During the Blender
conference a lecture covered the concepts of Free
Software, explained that producing Free Software games is now
possible. The release of Blender under the GNU GPL license
filled the last gap. An HTML
version of the presentation slides is available and you
can get the slide sources (GNU GPL'ed) from a standalone
tarbal.
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| The "Free Software Trophies" is an
international free software competition open to every free
software author. Servers and trips to France to
win. Registration is open until February 15th. Register your
project in one of the 6 categories and take this oportunity to
be known from the public and to publicise Free Software.
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| Georg Greve covered an often neglected aspect of
Free Software: it's legal maintainability. The current methods
for ensuring legal protection and the dynamic nature of the legal
system were discussed in detail.
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| Ismael Olea learnt about editing books in
classic ways. It offers many solutions to the problems of
on-line editing. Electronic books are different but the
process so similar that we can reuse the methodology.
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| The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSF Europe)
finishes its second general assembly, completing the first year
of activities. Members from Sweden, Italy, Germany and France
drew a summary of last years activities, analyzed the current
situation of Free Software and exchanged plans and visions for
the upcoming year.
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| FSF Europe and more than 40 European companies,
organizations, research centers and projects sent a
recommendation advocating for Free Software. This document
explains some of the reasons why Free Software should be
included in the considerations on the 6th European Community
framework programme 2002-2006 and gives input on how this
could be done.
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| A short report of the first LiLiT meeting. I
was specially impressed by the talk about EUCD. Alexandre
Dulaunoy (activist of the AEL) clearly explained
how and why it is harmful.
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| On Monday 29 April 2002, at 6pm in London, we
invite you to join the European Copyright
Directive Alert miniconference. Organized by
Campaign for
Digital Rights it will explain the dangers of
EUCD. If we don't stop
it before December 2002, it will become legal in each
European country.
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| The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announces
support for and invites public comment on the first public
license designed to protect software distributed as web
services: the Affero General Public License (AGPL). The AGPL
combines the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) V2 with one
additional provision to address software used by the public
over a network. The new provision enables the author to ensure
that users will have the right to use, study, copy, modify,
and redistribute that software, by providing a mechanism for
downloading the source and restricting the removal of the
mechanism.
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| The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today
heralded the launch of the Digital Speech Project: an effort
to encourage and coordinate activism to protect our digital
freedoms in light of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) and similar laws. The FSF has hired a Digital Freedom
Organizer, Jonathan Watterson, to work actively on the the
Digital Speech Project.
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| The European Commission approved this
wednesday a proposal of directive on software
patents. Incidentally, the author of this document, according
to the Microsoft Word file, is Francisco Mingorance, patent
expert and director of public policy at BSA (Business Software
Alliance), an association which represents the interests of
large US software publishers in Europe.
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| The Free Software Foundation (FSF) bestowed
on saturday February the 16th its fourth annual FSF Award for
the Advancement of Free Software. FSF President and founder,
Richard Stallman, presented the award to Guido van Rossum for
inventing and implementing as Free Software the Python
programming language. The award ceremony was hosted at the
Free and Open Source Software Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM) in
collaboration with the Free Software Foundation Europe.
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| During the year 2001, APRIL and FSFE France progressed
in a symbiotic way. The moral report is a short summary of all technical projects,
press contacts, political contacts etc. It gives a global view and we hope
it will encourage many activists to strenghen Free Software in the year
to come.
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| « This collaboration is a very important step
for the Portuguese and European free software
community. Problems faced by the free software community in
Portugal are similar to those faced in other European
countries; by joining forces with FSFE we can solve this
problems more efficiently » said Jaime Villate, founding member
of ANSOL.
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| Various online newspapers loudly claim that
the German government is on the side of people who are against
software patents (yahoo,
vnunet,
zdnet
etc.). It turns out to be very misleading, as explained in the
FFII
article on the subject. It is to be noted that the FFII
article is the only one to link to the actual
statement.
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| Richard Stallman came for a short visit in
Paris, from 20 to 23 November 2001. This document is not
a report. It is an outline of his activities and pointers
to the corresponding articles and reports.
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| This news, written in french, says that
many initiatives to reverse the tendency toward the patentibility
of software are launched by the Free Software Foundation Europe.
It cites the recent meeting between Noël Mamère (french deputy
of the green party and candidate to the presidential election)
and Richard Stallman.
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| Richard M. Stallman, considered to be
the founder of the Free Software movement, founder and president
of the Free Software
Foundation and initiator of the GNU project in 1983,
will be in Paris during this week. He will attend various
events during his visit.
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| Over the past few months the SourceForge
development facility, which hosts a large number of Free
Software projects, has changed its policies. Features
for exporting a project from SourceForge have been
removed. The implementation used to be exclusively Free
Software but is now based
on non-free software. Finally, VA Linux has become
rather underhand in their attempts to grasp exclusive
control of contributors' work. SourceForge did a lot of good
for the Free Software community, but it's now time to break
free.
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| Press release from EuroLinux : Juridical
Coup at the European Patent Office. EuroLinux demands European
governments to replace the current board of the European Patent Office
and to strengthen democratic control
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| On October 12th, the city of Porto hosted
the second edition of Porto
Cidade Tecnológica 2001, an event dedicated to
Free Software in Portugal. In an old market slightly above
the river, a conference room was installed in the
center. Booths, cyber cafe and install parties surrounded
it. The city of Porto provided the organisational
infrastructure and many people supported the initiative.
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| The latest issue of Georg's Brave
Gnu world is out. This month's items : Ganesha's
Projekt (Free Software helps stopping child labor in Nepal),
Logidee-tools (more efficient creation of courses and
tutorials), HTMLDOC (making information accessible based on
HTML), GNU Passwords On Card (store your passwords in a secure
way) and Sketch (Free Software vector drawing & a new way of
support). Read
the article.
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| An interesting debate between Luke Kenneth
Casson Leighton and Bruce Perens focused on a
misinterpretation of the GNU GPL and European Copyright
Law. It tells us that these issues require a deep
understanding of the legal system.
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| Masayuki Ida (ida@sipeb.aoyama.ac.jp) arrived
in Paris Saturday 6 October for a short stay. He was coming
from Dusseldorf and departed to London two days after. He
flied from Japan for a European tour of Free Software
organizations.
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| The french chapter of FSF Europe wishes to
celebrate in this very year 2001 the announcement of the GNU
project 18 years ago on September 1983 the 27th.
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| Have you ever been depressed, possibly more than once, to
discover that a so called Free
Software project was financed despite the fact that
it had nothing to do with Free Software? Europe will soon
be financing new projects and you could help prevent
similar travesties by becoming External
Experts. It will then be more difficult to claim that
nothing could be done: your skills are required to
validate the candidate projects.
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| A round table on Free Software was organized by the
annual summer
university at Hourtin, France. This event is the
traditional meeting where government officials meet with
companies and non profit organizations on the general subject
of information society. Frédéric Couchet managed for us to
be invited at the round table to speak in the name of the Free
Software movement.
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| The activities of FSFE France from June to
August cover contacts with Free Software organizations world
wide and actions in the field of education, law and
science. We help the GNU project to grow and benefit from
it. The happy crowd of volunteers is growing and get involved
in important and gratuitous tasks, depending on their mood.
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| A first set of articles about Free Software
reached the FSF. Collecting articles in France and adding them
to the archives at the FSF (Boston, USA) is a very workable
system. Your
contributions are welcome, even during holidays ;). A mailing
list is now available.
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| A tool allowing geographical representation of
Free Software Developpers on a terrestrial globe map is now
available here.
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| Although the subject of electronic voting is frequently
raised in various countries, both for votes on a nation wide
scale and votes in companies, it is rarely associated with
Free Software.
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| Richard M. Stallman today officially
launched the Free Software Foundation of India (FSF-India),
the first affiliate in Asia of the Free Software Foundation
with a speech at the Freedom First! Conference on Free
Software in Trivandrum, Kerala, India. Yesterday, he was
received as an honored state guest by government officials to
discuss the philosophy behind the movement and the use of free
software as a viable, cost-effective alternative for
government, educational institutions, and businesses, as well
as for all the people of India.
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| The AAUL is the Association Africaine des Utilisateurs
de Logiciels Libres (Free Software Users African
Association). The second L is missing from the acronym. The
organization used the LSM
meeting as an opportunity to report what was done during the
past year. The FSF Europe was there to propose help.
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| People involved in Free Software organizations in Italy,
Portugal, United States, Canada and France went for diner in
the old town of Bordeaux (France) after the sessions of LSM
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| The GNU project and its contributors received
the 2001 USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award. On behalf of all
GNU contributors, Robert J. Chassell accepted the award at the
2001 USENIX Annual Technical Conference at the Copley Marriott
Hotel in Boston, MA, USA. A copy of the acceptance speech, and
a copy of the
press
conference statements are available.
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| The FSFE France launch an appeal for contribution
to collect articles about Free Software for the
FSF. What we are looking for are articles that say something
new; go into great depth about an aspect; consider the wider
social or legal meanings; give a good overview of the subject;
talk about the history in depth; or other well-written pieces.
Something that is just so-so or just says the same-old-thing
would not really contribute to our collection.
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| Richard M. Stallman (President of the FSF) and Jacques Le
Marois (CEO
of MandrakeSoft)
met in Paris to talk about software patents.
Richard M. Stallman suggested to Jacques Le Marois that a
detailed information about the dangers of software patents be
displayed to every user of a Mandrake distribution. The user
would then be given the choice to declare readiness to take part in
some actions against software patents.
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| The latest issue of Georg's Brave
Gnu world is out. This month's items : TuxFamily.org
(a European Sourceforge alternative), Chrooted SSH CVS-Server
HOWTO, AutoGen (repeated C sourcecode made easy), Free
Software and Commercialization (is it okay to make money with
Free Software?). Read
the article.
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| Minutes of the first physical meeting of the
members of the FSFE-Portugal mailing list.
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| Boston, Massachusetts, USA - Monday, June 18,
2001 - The Free Software Foundation announced today the 3.0
release of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). GCC is a Free
(as in freedom) Software compiler toolset, licensed under the
GNU General Public License (GPL).
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| Activity report from the members of the list
fsfe-portugal@gnu.org (list of open discussions about FSF
Europe and Portugal). The members of the list fsfe-portugal have taken the first
steps towards the goal of forming a support association for a
future Chapter of the FSFE in Portugal.
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| This press release of the Eurolinux
alliance warns us against the Hague convention draft that
would provide legal grounds for global internet censorship and
the extension of american software patents to Europe, among
other cool things. Many dnagerous threats for Free Software.
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| The news published by FSFE France are now
integrated in my.userland.com. This
allows users of this site to get informed of FSFE France news,
as well as webmasters using userland.com's features to better
take advantage on this feed. Coming soon : mail delivery of
FSFE France news.
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| Richard M. Stallman, president of the Free
Software Foundation, announced today that New York University
has asked him to deliver a talk that will counterbalance the
speech made on May 3, 2001 at NYU by Craig Mundie of
Microsoft. More details in the FSF
press-release.
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| The FSF Europe
presence in France started its activity on April 12, a
little more than a month ago. We worked hard to launch the
core activities that will allow us to implement the goals of
the FSF and the FSF Europe : provide
Free Software for everything and everyone and protect its
existence when it is threatened.
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| Loïc Dachary, FSF Europe's vice-president was
interviewed by Julie Bresnick for NewsForge. This interview
details Loïc's resume as well as explaining the reasons of his
involvement in the Free Software movement.
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| The most prominent evangelists of the Free
Software sign an
open letter in response to the recent attacks of
Microsoft against Free Software. An indisputable unanimity
against Microsoft's practices, that reaffirms the importance
of Freedom as a federating value of the Free Software movement
and the Open Source movement.
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| In the interview, Benjamin Drieu gives us an
update on the process of translating and adapting the GNU GPL
license to french law. The project started on request of
Richard M. Stallman who gave its responsability to Mélanie
Clément-Fontaine. The FSFE France provides its assistance under
coordination of Frédéric Couchet.
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| APRIL and FSF Europe have a booth at the conference
Freedom and regional life. Development, usage, legal
protection of Free Software are actively discussed. Loïc Dachary
gives his side of the story for the first day of the conference.
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