Mako: "Dear free software supporter, Now is the time to join and give to Free Software Foundation. 2008 is going to be extraordinarily important year for free software. Eben Moglen likes to quote Gandhi's "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" progression when describing the free software movement. As I pointed out when I joined the FSF board, we're beginning to see powerful interests fighting free software. It's going to increase in the next few years. Things will probably get a lot uglier for free software before they get better. We can win but things are far from settled. The FSF is the front-line organization in this fight and we need a robust and proactive foundation, and an active and involved membership, if we're going to win.

" The future of software patents in Europe is uncertain. The Software Patent Directive was rejected by the European Parliament on the 6th of July 2005, after seven years of campaigning by people in FSFE and other organisations - most notably, one of our associate organisations, FFII. This was a monumental victory and displays the legislative competence of the Free Software community. However, the struggle is not over. Information about the current status of software patents in the EU can be found in this November 2007 blog entry: Do software patents exist in the EU?

The software patent issue is likely to return via initiatives such as the Community Patent or the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA)..."

Dear free software supporter, At the 2007 annual Associate Members meeting held in March at MIT in Cambridge, the FSF board and staff gathered with members from around the world to discuss our activities and the tremendous successes we have had together in the past year.

"...Created and maintained by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, the same organization that maintains the GFDL, the GPL allows licensees to freely distribute copies and modifications provided a number of requirements are followed. One major restriction is that any derivatives or verbatim copies must be licensed under the GPL too (the GPL has a viral clause, similar in spirit to the GFDL)..."

How do you destroy the GPL? Honestly I don't think it will be done, but there is a way. Simply put the GPL is a copyright license, which is it's strength and it's achillies heel. For years publishing companies, our friends at the RIAA and MPAA among others have pushed for longer and longer copyright terms so that they can reap the rewards from other people's work for a longer period of time. So why not turn things on their heads a bit? Actually, what I'm talking about has already been proposed.

"Richard Stallman was reading computer books before he'd ever seen a computer. When the Sixties Revolution was running out of steam, he was liberating MIT computers from behind locked doors and helping set off the next great Boomer movement. Though he disdained hippies and radicals in his youth, today, as the leader of the Free Software Movement, he's a long-haired rebel coder-writer with a cause, and an idealistic thorn in the side of the cyber world's killer-app capitalists..."

"At the end of day two of FOSS camp in Cambridge, I was able to grab some time with Benjamin Mako Hill. I had blogged about Mako's appointment to the board of the Free Software Foundation back in July but this was the first time that I really got to meet him. He's quite an amiable guy and very enthusiastic about what he's involved with (it definitely comes through in the interview). Check it out..."

"Neuros Technology, manufacturer of open-source powered, analog-to-digital video recorder hardware, is spearheading a new effort to educate consumers about" Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) "by establishing the 'Unlocked Media' brand..."

Via EFF http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/12/neuros-launches-unlocked-media-brand