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I ♥ Free Software Day & SUSE OSCC network

lundi 10 juin 2024 à 01:00

I ♥ Free Software Day & SUSE OSCC network

We got an email, a few weeks ago, that caught our attention. It came with a donation explaining that it was made in the name of an employee network at SUSE. We decided to investigate, asked the people responsible, and today we want to share this awesome story with you. (Note - this is also a great idea for an initiative to ask your company about).

Several weeks ago, we received a really nice message:

I'm part of a special interest group / employee network at SUSE called the SUSE Open Source Community Citizens (OSCC). In the spirit of the "I Love Free Software Day", we asked our SUSE colleagues to share why they got into and love Free Software. Every story told was being rewarded with 50 EUR that is going to be donated to the Free Software Foundation Europe, to support any of the activities that you're doing.

Of course our curiosity was piqued: we wanted to see the messages that they shared, to know a bit more about the SUSE OSCC group and this initiative and to know why they chose us. This is what we found:

On 14 February 2024, SUSE celebrated "I Love Free Software" day with its employees around the world with a variety of activities. One of the activities, organised by the SUSE employee volunteers of the Open Source Community Citizens, was simple: tell us why you got into Free/Libre/Open Source (FLOSS) Software and why you love it. Easy, right?

But that was not all! With the support of SUSE Cares, the SUSE Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, every story was worth $50! To donate to a non-profit charity. And for this occasion OSCC chose the Free Software Foundation Europe.

About 50 people participated sharing their 'I Love FS' messages, mainly internally through the internal communications wall but also externally on social media. In total, the amount of 2500EUR was reached, matching the Silver Sponsorship level!.

“The employee network / special interest group that organized this is focused on Open Source/Free Software and community activities. We like and generally endorse many of the activities from FSFE and several SUSE employees have been active in free software communities pretty much since GPLv2 was released. I personally have a connection to that as well”, explained Dirk Müller, one of the main organisers of this activity and a member of the OSCC group. Andy Fitzsimon, the sponsor of the employee network, said: “SUSE is proud to support the Free Software Foundation Europe, championing the ideals of free/libre software. Our donation reflects our commitment to fostering a collaborative community where technology and innovation benefit everyone.”

Although most of the reasons, often with personal messages that were shared by the SUSE colleagues, were shared within SUSE, some were posted on public social media. A few samples are below:

An awesome action, right? It really makes us happy to hear stories like these about I Love Free Software celebrations! And even more, when the initiative comes from the employees and the company supports them!

You can also help us by asking your employer to donate to the FSFE as part of their corporate responsibility program.

Donate now

Footnotes

  1. SUSE Cares is a corporate program at SUSE that focuses on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and manages a budget for the philanthropic giving program, which empowers our colleagues to volunteer their time and direct corporate donations to non-profit organizations that support any of SUSE’s chosen philanthropic goals like Education and Digital Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunities or climate action.

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EU election +++ DMA & Apple +++ REUSE tool

mardi 4 juin 2024 à 01:00

EU election +++ DMA & Apple +++ REUSE tool

In this issue, we explain our plans to make a movie of the story of Ada & Zangemann and we are asking for your support. A new REUSE version released; read the FSFE opinion to the European Commission on Apple’s new strategy to comply with DMA and its impact on Free Software.

Table of contents

Quote of the Month

“Socks. I want the socks. I love the FS socks. And if you have, others too”

-FOSDEM 2024 FSFE attendant-

Take action! Talk to your politicians, like our FSFE Netherlands coordinator

In a couple of days, the European citizens will choose their next representatives in the European Parliament. Get active to ensure that Software Freedom is part of the larger political debate!

The FSFE Netherlands coordinator has added his voice for Free Software to Amsterdam's digital city debate. Now it's your chance to highlight the importance of Free Software in the lead-up to the upcoming European Elections next week.

FSFE Netherlands coordinator question (in Dutch):"I think in March something beautiful happened in Amsterdam: the proposal 'Amsterdam Digital Independent' (or 'autonomous') was adopted. I was wondering: in it open source is mentioned to promote autonomy, but also to promote transparency. I would say this aligns with the points of the NSC. What will you do in Europe to bring that further and to support governments and municipalities to really make progress with free and open source software?"

REUSE v.3.1.0a1

The REUSE tool v3.1.0a1 has just been released! This is an alpha release that includes the new REUSE.toml functionality that replaces .reuse/dep5 (which is being soft-deprecated). The main purpose of REUSE.toml is to resolve .reuse/dep5 scenarios as described in https://github.com/fsfe/reuse-tool/issues/779: if a file has a header and is also covered by .reuse/dep5, and the two sources of information disagree about the licence, which licence applies?

In three steps, REUSE software addresses a fundamental problem with Free Software licensing at its source: what licence is a file licensed under, and who owns the copyright? The REUSE project consists of a set of best practices and a tool that makes it easy and simple to add this legal information to every single file in a project.

We are working on releasing version 3.2 of this tool soon, so stay tuned!

Apple's approach to DMA will harm Free Software

The FSFE continues to work on the implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), monitoring the strategies adopted by affected companies (gatekeepers), and their impact on Free Software. We submitted a comprehensive stakeholder position to the European Commission on how Apple cannot be compliant with DMA, and their strategy will reinforce their anti-competitive position. Our report lists that:- Apple should not limit business and end-users in their software freedom by overstating arguments of integrity and security of devices. - Apple should not discriminate against Free Software.- Apple should not be allowed to impose DRM encryption for app distribution regarding Free Software.- Apple should not be allowed to impose arbitraryinteroperability request forms, but interoperability should be granted automaticallyand effectively.

This study received substantial contributions from experts and other organizations including F-Droid, Onion Browser, and AppFair.

FSFE at the DMA compliance workshop for Apple

This report concludes that, while the DMA aims to promote contestability and fairness, Apple's proposed changes may reinforce its monopolistic behaviour by restricting software freedom, strengthening the dependency of developers and users on its own services and products, and increasing switching costs. The report also sets forth how integrity of operating systems must not be used for summarily imposing restrictions on 3rd party app stores

Ada goes to the set: let’s make an animated movie!

The illustrated book 'Ada & Zangemann: A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream' has made it into homes and libraries around the world. Now we need your help to reach even more kids! Help us make a film of this story and continue doing readings to spark more kids’ interest in coding and tinkering!

Stories from our community

On 25 and 26 May, the RoboCup France Junior took place in Bordeaux. Nursery and primary kids presented their robots while the teens and young adults competed with theirs in various competitions from soccer to rescue. On Sunday 26 May, Théo (15y) and Émilie (12y), two young French supporters, repurposed some of their local robot club (CDSR) booth into their first FSFE booth! They proudly shared FSFE stickers and presented the children's book Ada & Zangemann.

Also in France, in this case in Lyon, FSFE volunteer Vincent Lequertier participated in the Days of the Software Libre (JDLL is its acronym in French) with two readings of the illustrated book "Ada & Zangemann: Un conte sur les logiciels, le skateboard et la glace à la framboise".

And in the Netherlands, André Ockers, volunteer and deputy coordinator of the Dutch FSFE team, presented (in English) the Free Software Foundation Europe at WikiconNL 2024, the annual conference on Wikipedia, Wikimedia, digital heritage, and free access to information in a changing world.

Do not forget to check out planet.fsfe.org; our blog aggregator has several articles that you might find interesting!

And even more: LibreItalia, DORS/CLUC 2024 and esLibre 2024 conferences

At the beginning of May, we took part in the LibreItalia Conference. It was a great occasion to meet and chat with the Italian Free Software community. We had the possibility to talk about Public Money? Public Code! and engage with a younger audience thanks to the Ada and Zangemann story!

A bit later last month, we participated in DORS/CLUC, a conference in Zagreb with two talks, one about "Making AI Really Open: The Current Landscape of Free Software and AI Licensing" and another about "When our routers are not free: the challenges for an Open and Neutral Internet".

Finally, we travelled to Valencia to attend esLibre 2024. There we presented the competition YH4F, talked about CRA, PLD, and liability in Europe and explained why Free Software is important for our society!

Our talks from esLibre and DORS/CLUC were recorded so we will upload them in our usual channels as soon as they are available!

Contribute to our Newsletter

We would love to hear from you. If you have any thoughts, pictures, or news to share, please send them to us at newsletter@fsfe.org. You can also support us, contribute to our work, and join our community. We would like to thank our community and all the volunteers, supporters, and donors who make our work possible, with a special mention to our translators who make it possible for you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.

Your editor, Ana

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EU election: FSFE Netherlands Coordinator joins Amsterdam's Digital City Debate

jeudi 30 mai 2024 à 01:00

EU election: FSFE Netherlands Coordinator joins Amsterdam's Digital City Debate

EU elections debate: FSFE Netherlands coordinator adds voice for Free Software to Amsterdam's digital city debate. Now it's your chance to highlight the importance of Free Software in the lead-up to the upcoming European Elections next week.

With the European Elections approaching, the FSFE prompts a call to action, pointing out the importance of including Software Freedom in the political debate. On May 29, 2024, the city of Amsterdam organized the "Digitale Stad" debate, focusing on the online world of Amsterdammers and the impact of technology on the city and its residents in view of the European Elections, taking place between June 6 and 9 2024. The FSFE Netherlands coordinator, Nico Rikken, actively participated in this discussion, asking a question about Free Software.

FSFE Netherlands coordinator question that leads into a discussion during a Digital City Debate in Amsterdam. He asks (in Dutch):"I think in March something beautiful happened in Amsterdam: the proposal 'Amsterdam Digital Independent' (or 'autonomous') was adopted. I was wondering: in it open source is mentioned to promote autonomy, but also to promote transparency. I would say this aligns with the points of the NSC. What will you do in Europe to bring that further and to support governments and municipalities to really progress free and open source software?"

In the debate, the FSFE Netherlands coordinator emphasises the significance of Free Software in public administrations and its role in ensuring digital autonomy and a resilient digital society. This engagement highlights the importance for the Free Software community to get active and ensure its voice is heard in the upcoming elections. The FSFE empowers users to control technology and helps its community to make an impact. The experience of the Netherlands local group shows how this is possible:

“The European elections are a great opportunity to make an impact. For past elections we've contacted politicians and organized a “Freedomote” voting toolkit. That involved quite some work and had little impact. We discussed opportunities at our get-together and following the FSFE guide we looked into debates as a way to get in direct contact with candidates. Turns out there was one debate scheduled on digitization, held at DeBalie in Amsterdam, a location that frequently hosts debates. Looking at videos of past debates we concluded that it was at a small scale, and that there would be opportunity to speak to candidates before and after and that there was an opportunity for questions from the audience, as well. So in our online get-together we prepared a question to ask if we got the opportunity. To sum it up: little upfront investment, a bit of time to attend a great debate and made quite an impact”, explains Nico Rikken, FSFE Netherlands’ Coordinator.

With one week left to the elections, it is important to get involved and make your voices heard! The Netherlands local group meets regularly online and is very active. After reading the FSFE’s advice on how to get active during electoral campaign, they discussed together the opportunity to take part in a debate during one of their regular meet-ups. They elaborated possible questions to ask the candidates and took part in a debate happening in their area. This is only one example of the activities that local groups around Europe do every day. If you want to take part in one of the FSFE’s local groups, you will find one near you!

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Ada goes to the set: let’s make an animated movie

mercredi 15 mai 2024 à 01:00

Ada goes to the set: let’s make an animated movie

What do a Prime Minister, an MIT professor, and a child from Rajasthan have in common? They, along with other public figures and thousands of children, love the illustrated book 'Ada & Zangemann: A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream'. Ada has already made it into homes and libraries around the world, and now she needs your help to reach even more kids! Help us make a film of this story to spark more kids’ interest in coding and tinkering!

'Ada & Zangemann: A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream', tells the story of the famous inventor Zangemann and the girl Ada, a curious tinkerer. Ada begins to experiment with hardware and software, and in the process realises how crucial it is for her and others to control technology.

"A brilliantly illustrated journey of discovery and resilience that will inspire any young mind to embrace their curiosity and create with technology." - Zach Latta, Founder of Hack Club

The story has been translated into several languages and reached thousands of children and adults through public readings. Now, we want to go one step further and create a 30 minute movie about Ada’s story! This movie, released as an Open Educational Resource, will be a tool to encourage more children, especially girls, to tinker and learn how to code, while fostering inclusiveness and accessibility. Help us to achieve this goal!.

"I like how [the story] makes a positive statement that girls can code and use computers." - Child Reviewer, Purdue

Girls have often been discouraged from getting involved in technology and becoming tinkerers and coders, which has led to technology being largely designed by men for men. Ada shows girls and young women that they can shape technology for the future they want.

"The license choice also favors translations of the work, which gave me the idea of a collaborative educational project for its French translation." - Alexis Kauffmann, Project manager, French Ministry of Education and Youth

Thanks to our volunteers and the FSFE’s supporters the story is already available in 9 languages and we are working on more. More than 18,000 copies of Ada’s story have found their way into the hands of kids around the world, and we have been able to reach more than 1,400 children with readings, follow-up discussions, and workshops.

"A wonderfully entertaining read with an empowering message for younger generations, one which will shape our world and the way we live in it." - Kaye Fogarty, teacher from a school in Marbella who did a reading with her students

Your contribution will help us to work on the 2D animated version of the book to reach an even wider audience so more children, especially girls, can hear and watch this story that encourages curiosity and tinkering. Everyone will be able to download and share it, use it in schools, and integrate it with other educational material, making a difference to the quality of IT education that is so vital for young people in our digital society.

"This modern tale is a superb parable, and a perfect illustration of the need for digital freedoms in our daily lives. The tone is positive, laughing, and optimistic for the future, so that new generations will be stronger than we have been." JB Kempf, President, VideoLAN

Your support will make a difference!. It will help us to create this movie but also to continue to spread the story of Ada through readings in different languages, and to encourage others to do so!

"This book is exactly what I want to pass on to my children!." - Canelle A., 18-year-old student translator in a Parisian high school

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LLW 2024 +++ YH4F interviews +++ Ada in France

mercredi 8 mai 2024 à 01:00

LLW 2024 +++ YH4F interviews +++ Ada in France

May comes with legal news such as the Legal & Licensing Workshop and the Bitcoin lawsuit regarding the liability of Free Software developers. We also talked to two 2023 YH4F participants and our Danish local group sent an Open Letter to their parliament. Did you see that Ada & Zangemann won a prize and that the French ebook version is now available?

Table of contents

Quote of the Month

"As in our democracies, the distribution of power in the field of technology is essential. And we need to show that an inclusive path is possible".

-Matthias Kirschner, thanking the Forum InCyber for the prize given to Ada & Zangemann.

LLW 2024: A forum for difficult legal topics of Free Software in Gothenburg

For the second year in a row, the Swedish city of Gothenburg hosted an edition of the Free Software Legal & Licensing Workshop (LLW), the annual conference for the Legal Network members. The 2024 edition brought new faces and great discussions and presentations on current legal and licensing issues related to technological developments such as AI.

Meet Antoni and Tobias, YH4F participants

Find out more about the Youth Hacking 4 Freedom participants of the 2023 edition. We are continuing this series talking with Antoni and Tobias: Antoni developed a dictionary to preserve endangered languages, and Tobias conceived a rich featured calendar.

Free Software developers' liability and the Bitcoin lawsuit

Free Software is everywhere, with studies estimating that it is present in about 96% of the applications that we use. But what are the responsibilities and liabilities of the Free Software developers? A potential threat to Free Software developers looms in the form of an ongoing lawsuit in the UK involving Bitcoin and its core developers.

Find more about it

Ada & Zangemann: news from France

Danish local group initiative

The FSFE Danish local group has sent an Open Letter to the IT spokespersons of all the political parties in the Danish Parliament, entitled “Digitalisation problems can be solved with Free/Open Source Software”. In this letter, the local group pointed out several examples of cases in which using proprietary software is harming citizens’ rights and privacy, for example the municipalities' strong wish to use proprietary software (Google Classroom) in schools, which is actively sharing students' private data to Google in violation of the GDPR.

The local group is currently waiting for an official answer from the parliamentarians though they have already received positive responses.

You can check the letter (in Danish) here.

Germany: Public TV broadcasters announce ‘Streaming OS’ as Free Software

The German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF have announced that they will integrate their media centres in future and publish their code as Free Software. Under the name ‘Streaming OS’, the software will be available to the general public under a Free Software licence.

In their announcement, the directors of the broadcasters emphasise that by publishing the code, they want to give something back to society that it has previously paid for. ARD and ZDF are thus addressing the core idea of our FSFE initiative ‘Public Money? Public Code!’. We are looking forward to seeing Streaming OS and its code in 2025!

The Berlin group of the FSFE participated in the 2024 edition of the Umweltsfestival (Environmental Festival) together with Bits&Bäume Berlin and KDE Eco. Our volunteers explained to festival attendees the sustainable use of computers with Free Software as well as other FSFE initiatives such as Public Money, Public Code and even answered questions about the Fediverse.

Get involved: organize an Ada & Zangemann reading!

Do you want to help spread the word about Free Software to the younger generations? You can do it with an Ada & Zangemann reading! If you like children, this is an easy and a great way to talk to them about Free Software. And everyone who has done it has found it a really rewarding and enriching experience!

If you are interested in facilitating a reading of the book in schools or libraries, write to contact@fsfe.org.

Contribute to our Newsletter

We would love to hear from you. If you have any thoughts, pictures, or news to share, please send them to us at newsletter@fsfe.org. You can also support us, contribute to our work, and join our community. We would like to thank our community and all the volunteers, supporters, and donors who make our work possible, with a special mention to our translators who make it possible for you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.

Your editor, Ana

Support FSFE