Thursday, January 30, 2014

FSF licensing team: doing even more in 2014

The free software movement was born out of a response to a rising tide of restrictions being placed on users via contracts and non-disclosure agreements. The GNU General Public License (GPL) and other free licenses provide legal mechanisms that help ensure that software can carry to each user the freedom to run the software for any purpose and to study, modify and share the source code.
Whether it is enforcing the terms of the license, educating the public about their rights to use and share software, or promoting software and devices that respect users, the FSF's Licensing and Compliance Lab works hard to keep the GPL's promise and make sure it is shared as widely as possible. We wish to share with you a bit of what we did in 2013 in each of these areas, as well as let you know how we want to do more in 2014.
We hope you will support our efforts and our fundraising goal by signing up as an associate member before the end of January. If you are already a member, please consider gifting a membership to a friend.

Copyright & Compliance

The FSF holds the copyright on a large proportion of the GNU operating system, and other free software. Every year we collect and register hundreds of copyright assignments from individual software developers and corporations working on free software. We register these copyrights with the US copyright office and enforce the licensing terms of the software — typically the GNU General Public License. We do this to ensure that free software distributors respect their obligations to pass on the freedom to all users.
What we did in 2013
We responded and resolved over four hundred reports of suspected license violations and over eight hundred general licensing and compliance questions. We reduced the backlog of old requests substantially, and are now focused on new and exciting compliance cases. Our corps of volunteers handling licensing questions has grown considerably, thus reducing wait times and improving the depth and detail of the answers served.
How we want to do more in 2014
With the backlog in check, we can now focus on building up our compliance program, work on resolving new cases, and dedicate more time to handling cutting edge licensing questions.

Verification & Certification

The FSF Licensing & Compliance Lab celebrates and promotes free software distributions and computer hardware products that have made a firm policy commitment to only including and promoting free software. Simply put, we want you to be able to purchase computer hardware or download an operating system and be confident that it is designed to respect your freedom and privacy.

What we did in 2013
We awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) hardware certification to the Gluglug X60 Laptop on December 18th, 2013. Our goal when launching the RYF certification program was to be able to endorse a complete system built on 100% free software, from firmware to OS, and the Gluglug X60 marked the achievement of that goal. Elated on hearing the news of this achievement, FSF president Richard Stallman stated, "Finally there is a free software laptop that respects your freedom as it comes from the store!"
But, that's not all! We also certified three new models of 3D printers by Aleph Objects, Inc and two wireless USB adapters sold by ThinkPenguin. Learn more about all of these at www.fsf.org/ryf.
How we want to do more in 2014
In order to build the reputation and public awareness of the FSF's RYF certification mark, we need a lot of hardware products that respect your freedom. Our goal is to continue growing, promoting, and certifying more products that respect your freedom.

Education & Support

The FSF Licensing & Compliance Lab has been the preeminent resource of free licensing for free software developers. We publish copyleft free software licenses so that anybody can quickly and easily add terms that ensure the software will carry freedom to every user. But our work doesn't stop there; we also publish educational materials such as licensing recommendations, analysis, and FAQs; we offer a gratis consulting service to the global free software community; and we advocate for legal reform to patent and copyright-related laws that leave free software developers vulnerable to attack.
What we did in 2013
In 2013, we made several updates to the GPL FAQ and our list of software licenses, which received approximately a million unique visitors. Further, we published a number of interviews with free software projects that release their work under GNU GPLv3, and we hosted weekly IRC meetings to support our growing base of volunteers who are working to improve the Free Software Directory.
However, not all of our work is online: the licensing team has also been getting out into the world to add the FSF's voice with policy makers and legal experts, while at the same time staying connected with the free software community.
In March, Josh represented the FSF's position on the elimination of software-idea patents, first at a USPTO-hosted event on patent reform at New York University, and again, later that month at a Harvard Law School conference on patent and copyright law that included federal district and circuit court judges and White House advisers.
Also in March, Donald and Josh, along with FSF board member, Bradley Kuhn hosted a panel titled, Licensing & compliance: a collective effort at LibrePlanet, the FSF's annual free software conference. In May, Donald took part in the Day Against DRM in Seattle. And in September, Josh hosted a Software Freedom Day & Cryptoparty event in New Haven, CT. Lastly, in November, Donald shared the FSF's philosophy and approach to free software licensing at a continuing legal education conference in San Francisco.
How we want to do more in 2014
All this speaking and teaching has geared us up for a big event this year -- one that brings together the free software community and the legal community under one roof: we will be hosting a legal summit running along side LibrePlanet. In the past, the License and Compliance Lab has offered continuing legal education courses on the GPL and free software licensing. With our expanded capacity we are ready to start that program up once again. We hope that this year's legal summit will be the first in an ongoing program to educate and engage the legal community directly on the issues that matter the most when it comes to free software licensing.

How you can help

We have shared with you some of the important work that the Licensing & Compliance Lab will be doing this year. In order to accomplish this work and the many other goals we have set for ourselves, we need your support.

Donate or become an associate member.
If you are already a member, consider signing up a friend!

If you are interested in becoming a licensing volunteer for the FSF, please email us — we'd love your help!
Sincerely,
The FSF Licensing & Compliance Lab
You can read this post online at http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-licensing-team-doing-even-more-in-2014.

As free software users, we need to speak out against the TPP

You may already be involved in the international grassroots movement against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Lobbyists and officials from twelve countries, including the US, are currently bickering over the details of this massive international "free trade" treaty. They are creating the TPP to strongly promote Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and enforce draconian copyright law, which will hinder free software development.
Similar to 2012's SOPA and PIPA, TPP would likely entrench the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) measures that make it a crime to circumvent DRM, even when circumvention is done for non-commercial purposes. It would also export this criminalization to other countries with less onerous DRM policies. But that's not all: it would restrict fair use, lengthen copyright terms, and regulate the temporary copies of media that computers make, in a way that our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have called "out of touch with the realities of the modern computer." All of these restrictions would make it much harder for free software applications to interface with media and the Internet, chilling free software development and use.
Facing opposition, President Obama is attempting to bypass the US's standard approval process for treaties and unilaterally ram through the TPP, in a process known as a "fast track." Today (Wednesday, January 29th), the FSF is joining the diverse StopFastTrack coalition in urging our US supporters to simultaneously take action against this.
If you can vote in the United States, please take five minutes to call your representatives and tell them you oppose the fast track because TPP would promote Digital Restrictions Management and hinder free software development. The StopFastTrack Web site will connect you automatically. We recommend you visit the site with JavaScript turned off, as it includes some nonessential proprietary scripts. If we all raises our voices at once today, we can make TPP and the fast track too unpopular to pass.
Not reading this until after January 29th? We encourage you to call in anyway, sustained pressure is just as important as raising a big uproar all at once.
If you can't vote in the United States, we encourage you to stand up against TPP wherever you are. If you live in one of the other participating countries, you can do this by contacting your elected officials. Please email us at campaigns@fsf.org if you know of any actions in your country, so that we can help promote them.
Because it's widely known as the TPP, (and because of its generally low moral worth) some have referred the agreement as the "Toilet Paper Protocol." We think this is apt. But with toilet paper, the labels at least allow you some degree of information about what you're getting. TPP, however, is being negotiated almost entirely behind closed doors, in chambers populated by lobbyists and government officials, but empty of journalists. Most of the information we have about this utterly undemocratic deal comes from leaked documents.
TPP focuses on more than just copyright and DRM -- it is a giant mess of things that lobbyists couldn't get passed through more democratic channels. That's part of the reason that people from so many different groups and walks of life are coming together to oppose it.
Of the groups speaking out against TPP, we are proud to be one of the few that is putting free software first in our argument against the partnership. If you can vote in the US, please call in and say that you oppose TPP because it would promote DRM and harm the development of free software. Let's make sure that congress knows our movement has something to say in this fight.
This isn't the first time the FSF has stood up against proposed laws and trade agreements that would hurt free software -- we played a role in the fight against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as well as SOPA/PIPA, and we sent a licensing expert to Australia to advocate for free software at an earlier TPP negotiation session. But we'd like to be doing even more to bring your voice to the debate. To give us the tools we need, we've set an ambitious fundraising goal of $450,000 by this Friday, and we're almost there. Can you chip in $25 to help us expand our work in 2014? Thanks for your support.
Zak Rogoff
Campaigns Manager
Image CC-BY Electronic Frontier Foundation.
You can view this post online at https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/as-free-software-users-we-need-to-speak-out-against-the-tpp.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Speakers and venue announced for FSF's LibrePlanet 2014 -- register today!

There is so much to look forward to at LibrePlanet 2014 that I don't even know where to begin. Let me break it down for you.

Keynotes

The keynotes at LibrePlanet 2014 are sure to be amazing. We'll be joined by Sue Gardner, outgoing executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Eben Moglen, director-counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center, Karen Sandler, executive director of the GNOME Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation's founder and president, Richard Stallman.
Register Today. You won't want to miss these fantastic speeches.

Sessions

This year, LibrePlanet will feature nearly 30 sessions centered around the theme, "free software, free society." You can find a sneak peek of all our sessions on the conference site now--sessions like "Everybody spies," "Lessons in tech activism," "TPP and free software," and "Updating Mailman's UI." Whether you're a developer seeking to deepen your knowledge, a free data advocate who wants to nerd out over OpenStreetMap, an academic who wants more free software in the classroom, or an organizer just starting to see the link between your work and free software, you'll find plenty of great conversations at LibrePlanet 2014.
Register today to catch all of these amazing sessions at LibrePlanet.

Location, Location, Location

LibrePlanet 2014 will be held in the iconic Stata Center on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA. We'll have some beautiful lecture halls for our sessions and a great big hallway for our exhibitors. (If you're thinking about applying for an exhibit table, the deadline is January 31st, so get crackin'.) This building was designed by Frank Gehry and is also home to the offices of World Wide Web Consortium. So, while you're at LibrePlanet, you just may want to drop in and ask W3C why they are considering weaving support for DRM into HTML5!
Register today to bask in the shiny glory of the Stata Center.

Extracurriculars

Our traditional Friday night open house at the FSF offices is getting a new twist this year--we're adding a cryptoparty! We've also got the Free Software Awards, and a few new and exciting events we're working on announcing. Needless to say, there will be lots of fun activities to fill your evenings during LibrePlanet.
So, what are you waiting for? Registration is open, and, as always, admission to the conference is gratis for FSF members and students. Not a member? Join today and you'll get admission to the conference, plus you'll be helping us meet our winter fundraising goal of $450,000 by January 31st. See you in eight weeks!
Sincerely,
Libby and the LibrePlanet team
You can read this post online at https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/speakers-and-venue-announced-for-fsfs-libreplanet-2014-register-today.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Control Your Computer With Your Brain via Open Source

InfoWorld (01/13/14)

The team behind the OpenBCI project hopes to release the third iteration of the OpenBCI board sometime around April 2014. Joel Murphy and Conor Russomanno, a Brooklyn, NY--based designer and engineer, respectively, are working on prototypical technology that will enable people to control computers with their brains. The latest version includes Bluetooth LE connectivity and other improvements. As part of the OpenBCI project, they are developing an affordable electroencephalography (EEG)-reading headset device that would provide access to high-quality, raw EEG data with minimal power consumption, without the use of blackbox algorithms or proprietary hardware designs. The open source software used to drive the board will be available with interfaces for multiple languages and several existing open source EEG signal-processing applications. Other key parts of the project include the OpenBCI controller, which uses the Texas Instruments ADS1299 Analog Front End IC, while the headgear, which is worn by the user, is open design and can be configured on a per-user basis.

View Full Article

EU also recommends ODF as a standard format | Steve Woods - Language, Linux, Open Source

http://www.slwoods.co.uk/?p=3445

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Out in the Open: An NSA-Proof Twitter, Built With Code From Bitcoin and BitTorrent

Wired News (01/13/14) Klint Finley

Concerned about government surveillance of Internet traffic and social networks, Miguel Freitas aims to create a more secure alternative to Twitter using code from Bitcoin and BitTorrent. Although Twitter pushes back on government efforts to obtain user data, caution should be exercised in placing too much information with a single company, according to Freitas. He is building a decentralized social network called Twister, which no single entity should be able to shut down. Twister blocks users from gaining information about specific other users, such as when they are online, their IP address, and who they follow. Direct and private messages on Twister are protected with the same encryption scheme used by LavaBit. Twister is now available in a test version that runs on Android, Linux, and OSX, and can be configured to work with other operating systems because of its open source code. The network uses the Bitcoin protocol to ensure that user names are not registered twice, and that posts attached to a particular user name do in fact originate from that user. The BitTorrent protocol enables Twister to distribute a large volume of posts quickly and efficiently, and enables users to receive almost instant notification about new posts without relying on central servers.

View Full Article

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Top 5 open source project management tools, the maker manifesto, and more

WEEKLY NEWS

Top 5 open source project management tools
Getting things done with open source.
How to set up a FOSS environment on your computer
Setup and maintenance can be easy.
Using OpenStreetMap to respond to disasters before they happen
Making geographic data work for humanitarian relief.
OpenSaaS and the future of government IT innovation
Making software easier and cheaper for governments.
The Maker Manifesto: What are you going to do?
Explore the world of crafters, hackers, and tinkerers.
Android is coming to cars, Mozilla is coming to TVs, and more
Open source news from around the Web.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

How one parent fosters open source at home through DIY projects
By Carolyn Fox
Which open source software license should I use?
By Stephen R. Walli

OPEN SOURCE EVENTS

The seventh annual Apereo Camp scheduled for January 27-30 in Mesa, AZ will provide opportunities to collaborate on all Apereo community projects and initiatives.

More than 5,000 developers from all over the world are planning to descend on FOSDEM 2014, scheduled for Feburary 1 & 2 in Brussels, Belgium.

Check out the events calendar to see other upcoming open source events and submit your own!

Educators need the right tools to teach and collaborate with their students and others. Our list of open source educational tools for 2014 picks out some of the best.

Linux comes in many flavors, and we know that our readers have all sorts of reasons for choosing their favorite. Take our poll and let us know which Linux distribution you prefer.

GitHub has become the de facto repository for open source projects on the web. In this video, we sit down with GitHub's co-founder and CIO Scott Chacon to talk about culture and the future of GitHub.

ENTERPRISERS PROJECT

Join the open sourced-dialogue about the future of CIOs.

Are You a Game-Changer or a Problem-Fixer?
Does your job description match your aspirations?
Is this the age of the CIO?
In the age of business, everyone must be IT-aware.
Follow the Enterprisers Project on Twitter
Tweets for business-minded IT leaders.

Decisions tend to fall into one of four categories. Learn why strategic decisions are different from other kinds of decisions and

how to approach decisions that fall into the toughest category.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

OPENSOURCE: A DISCUSSION WITH THE LINUX FOUNDATION

full article here : http://openmarkets.cmegroup.com/7385/opensource-a-discussion-with-the-linux-foundation-on-the-state-of-open-source-tech

The Linux operating system has been around for 20 years and the community around it seems stronger than ever. What do you think has made it so successful?
.....
Linux is used in everything from embedded devices to large electronic trading systems. How do you ensure that features added for one use case don’t negatively impact another? For example, performance issues that may affect our industry?
.....
The demand just keeps going up. We as a community and an industry are having a difficult time meeting the demand frankly. This year’s Linux Jobs Report showed that 93 percent of hiring managers would be looking for Linux professionals in 2013 but that 90 percent believed it would be hard to find qualified candidates. This is an amazing opportunity for Linux developers and sysadmins.

....
What’s next for open source software is being out front every time. It is allowing companies to innovate at higher levels of the software stack where they can differentiate and deliver new products, services, applications and experiences for consumers and customers. Open source is no longer the “alternative; it’s the first choice every time. This will lead to more and more collaborative development among groups of companies from distinctly different industries that need to accelerate technology and address complex technical challenges to transform a market.