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In this edition we discuss the misleading term "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms" (FRAND), we explain what we are doing about centralised computer systems and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and update you on our current campaign to end non-free software commercials by public institutions.
One of the inescapable facts of free software is that it involves a lot of law - far more than innocent hackers might expect when they settle down for a light bit of coding.
So much quarreling about open standards. Jason Matusow advocates for a document format with RAND licensing conditions for the patents. What does he mean when he talks about RAND? RAND stands for "reasonable and non-discriminatory". But Jason Matusow's company Microsoft lacks honesty when it talks about "reasonable and non-discriminatory" conditions.
The European Parliament is on the verge of adopting a directive reforming standards, reform which would introduce FRAND patent licensing terms, an undefined term which has been seen as a direct attack on the fundamental principles of Free and Open Source software. The Business Software Alliance has been very active trying to get FRAND terms into the directive.
In our newsletter, everyone, Free Software enthusiast or not, can learn more about the recent activities of the FSFE. Please take a look and make any comment you like: it will be very appreciated!
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Nicolas, Intern at the Free Software Foundation Europe
"October marked the beginning of a planning phase in FSFE. As well as planning our campaigns for next year, we've been working on some actions for around the upcoming festive season. Alongside the internal discussions, we've been asking the community for ideas when we go to events or hold Fellowship meetings.
This edition covers the current developments in Open Standards policy, some basic information about software patents, an update from FSCONS about distributed computing, and how you can support us in the end of the year.
This edition explains how we counter the lobby work of proprietary organisations at the European level, what we do at the United Nations level to inform more people about the dangers of software patents, what we are doing to get rid of non-free software advertisement on public websites, and what you can do to make a change.
Welcome to the November edition of the Foresight Linux Newsletter. With the recent release of the first alpha of Foresight Linux 2, this month's newsletter will take a detailed look at the release, including changes from the 1.x releases, how to test both the GNOME edition and new KDE edition, and the next alpha of Foresight Linux 2.