New 'Event' system

Fellow Alejandro Serrano helped improve the event system by installing and customizing an agenda-like extension. Other feature are being added, next one will be the anti-spam system to enable anonymous comments to the blogs.

5th international GPLv3 conference: Tokyo, Nov 21&22

It's just been announced that the 5th international GPLv3 conference
will be held on November 21 and 22, in Akihabara UDX Conference Room
A+B, Tokyo, Japan.

The four previous international GPLv3 conferences were held in:

All transcripts include the subsequent Q&A session except for
the January transcript, which is 90 minutes on its own.

Pardus 1.1 hit alpha

After the successful 1.0 Distro, Pardus developers published the alpha ISO of the 1.1. version. I gave it a try yesterday, as usual on my test system. The look & feel effect is very fine and I am happy to see that even in alpha, the system is very stable. Well done people! Greetings meren.

New function: trackback

Aside from more bug fixing, we now have functional trackbacks on the Fellowship site. New blog entries can now ping successfully external sites. Also blog entries now from this site show a trackback link so that other sites can ping the articles that Fellows write on their blog. Report any problems on the forum. Thank you for your support.

And the winners are…

Andrea and Wouter both will receive a HP Compaq Notebook – both pre-installed with Debian GNU/Linux.
We congratulate the lucky winners and thank all of you for joining this great community!

Call for volunteer system administrators

FSFE will offer to these volunteers the possibility to take training classes with eZ Systems – courses are most commonly held in Norway, Germany, France. FSFE funds don't allow covering the travel and lodging expenses of the chosen volunteers for the duration of the courses.

The volunteers' job will be done via remote access once the training is complete.

Please submit your application and a short curriculum vitae to maffulli AT fsfeurope .org

FSFE to Microsoft: stop complaining, and start complying!

"It makes a very sad and worrysome statement about the quality and reliability of software engineering at Microsoft if they indeed do not have proper interface specifications and documentation for their considerably complex and organic systems, as Microsoft have repeatedly maintained," explains Jonas Öberg, vice-president of FSFE. "That 'hundreds of Microsoft employees and contractors' [1] were apparently not able to produce this documentation in almost two years further undermines the confidence in Microsoft's technological prowess."

"That Microsoft now questions the competency and integrity of a Trustee they themselves helped appoint is outrageous. All the parties involved in the case found the Trustee showed an intimate competence and understanding," says Carlo Piana, the lawyer representing FSFE on the case: "How do they now dare maintain that he is biased? Because he is not willing to lie against all evidence? We support the Commission all the way, and possibly beyond. And: If Microsoft wanted to know how it could easily comply, they just had to ring Volker Lendecke, member of the Samba Team, one of our technical experts, as we offered them"

"Microsoft has behaved as if they consider themselves above the law and any decision by the European Commission. The aggressive stance they now take towards a Commission that was unbelievably patient with Microsoft further confirms that view," concludes Georg Greve. "Microsoft strove very hard to be the first company to leave the European Commission no choice but to impose daily fines for the first time in European antitrust history. Microsoft deserves to be granted what they worked for so vehemently and be brought to compliance the hard way."

FKF and FSFE teaming up: FKF official associate organisation of FSF Europe

Following a decision at the last foundation board meeting of FKF to co-operate more closely with FSF Europe, as well as a decision by the members of the FSFE Team, both organisations are delighted to announce their official co-operation. The FKF is the first associate organisation of the FSFE in Spain, a country with a strong Free Software community.
"Our adversaries are usually multi-national groups, funded heavily by multi-national companies. If we are to defend Free Software and all that is related to it against their encroachments, then we need to be equally present," explains Georg Greve, President of Free Software Foundation Europe. "That is why FSFE started out as a multi-national organisation from the outset, building teams across cultural and language barriers to work together to further Free Software. We are very happy to welcome another group to our large family."
"While we are focused on Free Knowledge, Free Software, Free Standards and Intellectual Wealth dissemination, Free Software is at the centre of our work, as the initiating and inspiring phenomenon of this new way of understanding knowledge.", says Pablo Machón, President of FKF. "The FSFE has always been an inspiration for our work. Becoming an associated organisation of FSFE is, thus, a natural consequence of sharing ideals, a long-term vocation, and working together towards the same goal."

About the Free Knowledge Foundation (FKF)

The Free Knowledge Foundation is a non-profit organisation based in Spain and focused on Free Knowledge, Free Software, Free Standards and Intellectual Wealth dissemination. The FKF promotes the concept of knowledge as being publicly and freely accessible for both usage and contribution.
www.libre.org

Il futuro del sw libero al Master Tecnologia del Software Libero a Bologna

La licenza GNU GPL è la licenza per il Software Libero più usata al
mondo. Quasi tre quarti di tutti i programmi liberi sono distribuiti
con questa licenza. Fin dalla prima revisione, più di 15 anni fa, il
modo di sviluppare software e i modelli commerciali per la distribuzione
di software sono cambiati enormemente.

Il 16 Gennaio la FSF ha avviato un processo strutturato sollecitando
riscontri dalla comunità con lo scopo di produrre una licenza che
difenda al meglio la libertà e serva la comunità e le aziende. Il
processo include discussioni pubblice, identificazione di problemi,
considerazioni e ragionamenti su questi problemi e pubblicazione di
responsi. La pubblicazione della seconda bozza è prevista per l'estate
del 2006 e un ultimo giro di commenti, o una bozza finale, saranno
pronte per l'autunno del 2006. La licenza finale GPLv3 è attesa non più
tardi della primavera del 2007.

L'appuntamento è per Venerdì 10 Febbraio alle 18:30 presso la sede del
Master:
ALMA Graduate School
Villa Guastavillani
Via degli Scalini, 18
40136 – Bologna

Questo appuntamento è parte di una serie di eventi e conferenze
nazionali ed internazionali per il progetto GPLv3. Nelle prossime
settimane saranno annunciati altri incontri.