First, the blog entries can now be edited with a full blown WYSYWIG editor. No need to fiddle with < > and html tags.

Second, blog entries now support tags: tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to any blog entry. As del.icio.us put it,

Tagging can be a whole lot easier and more flexible than fitting your
 information into preconceived categories. If you want to post an article about a little
 known Greek philosopher, just tag it with "philosophy greece" or whatever other tags
 you'd want to use to find it again. You don't have to rely on the designer of the system
 to provide you with category for Greek philosophy. You just make up tags as you need
 them.

Have fun exploring these improvements and, as usual, report problems and give suggestions for improvements on the forum.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) critically reviews Microsoft's offer to publish source code instead of protocols.

Georg Greve, President of FSFE explains: "The European Commission asked Microsoft to publish their protocols to allow others to write interoperable software and to re-establish competition. That does not appear to have happened, at least the terms under which the protocols are supposedly available are not clear. What they have done instead is publish source code, which they weren't asked to do."

In a press release Microsoft announced yesterday "to license all the Windows Server source code". This would underscore Microsoft's "commitment to resolve compliance issues".

According to FSFE this would not be of any help, but would cause additional troubles. Carlo Piana, FSFE's lawyer explains: "This 'commitment' is poisoned – they do it in a way that worsens the situation for Free Software: Because that source code is under Microsoft copyright, developers who have seen the source code cannot reimplement it in Free Software for fear of copyright violation."

Even worse, "Microsoft might try to shut down competition by making claims of copyright infringement based on the argument that the developer 'could' have looked at the source code", Piana forecasts.

Georg Greve adds: "Indeed. How exactly are developers supposed to write interoperable software without looking at the source code if the specifications are not available? If you eat from that apple, you find yourself poisoned by their copyright."

After their welcoming of Microsoft's new 'Shared Source' Licences which were substantially improved over their previous licensing proposals, FSFE was willing to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.

"It now seems clear this was just another marketing ploy: Yesterday Microsoft acted like a robber that, when asked to please put away the gun, tosses you a grenade. Our praise seemed premature in hindsight", Greve finishes.

These days, FSFE meets adversaries of freedom in various venues: In Brussels, the 'Intellectual Property Rights European Enforcement Directive' (IPRED2) is being pushed by the rights-holding industry, and Microsoft has shown that it was able to rewrite the Vienna Conclusions on ICT and Creativity for the UN World Summit on Information Society (WSIS).

Read the full press release

The long march to a better blogging platform has reached a new milestone. With the new portal, based on eZ Publish, we are able to offer a more solid blogging system with more features, like trackbacks, comments, easier image upload, and a clear path of development. FSFE is working directly with the eZ team to develop a more complete tool.

We have added also forums for the reason to help the Fellows to discuss and get together in many-to-many conversations. Any comment and request is appreciated: feel free to post them and we will try to provide answers.

Probably there are still some nasty bugs that we didn't squash: we ask for forgiveness in advance 🙂 The migration process was very difficult and we did the best to keep all the content intact. If you are missing something you can report it in the forums or you can help yourself copying the old content from http://plone.fsfe.org (same login data as usual). The old plone site will stay online until 31st of December.

Thank to all Fellows for your kind support.

“Everybody Loves Eric Raymond” is an online comic. It depicts the real lives of Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds as accurately as comedically possible. Their real lives, which include living together in a house, with dynamic dimensions, without their wives or girlfriends.
We at FSFE love this strip, so when we saw that the author, John Leach, is looking for new characters we thought that the Fellows can help. Send a picture of you wearing your "plussy" t-shirt to lovesraymond@gmail.com. Here is the original request of John:

I’m caving in to pressure and am planning to introduce some new
characters. I need new bodies to do this. This is where you, and the
power of creative commons/free culture, comes in. If you have a digital
camera, an example of typical geeky attire, and a hilarious human body
then you can help. Dress in the aforementioned attire, have a friend
take a few photos of you posing in typical comic-strip stances, send
photos to lovesraymond@gmail.com (only send photos here.  fan/hate mail should 
always go to eler@geekz.co.uk.)

You agree to license your photos under a Creative Commons Attribution
License so I can use them quite freely. Ensure you are very well lit;
try outside in daylight. Try to get the white balance set right. Try to
stand in front of a plain uniform background, or at least one in clear
contrast to your clothing. The rest is up to you.