Hack4Europe! Hacking for freedom

Hack4Europe! 2012 is a set of events in five different countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Latvia and Poland) organised by Europeana and partners between 9 May- 21 June.
Hackathons are organised to bring together developers, designers and programmers who can compete to develop their ideas for the creative re-use of Europeana data and to build applications.
Happy hacking!

The opening up of innovation in Europe

Although we have to face difficult times for the economy, we also have to think about the future growth of Europe. One of the aims of Innovation Union and its financial instrument Horizon 2020 is to boost Europe’s competitiveness via innovation.

As FSFE suggested in its position paper concerning Horizon 2020, education and developing future talent in Europe will be crucial for this.

First of all because technology literacy is essential to better understand and make better use of technology.

Second, while on other parts of the World following the logic of internet, universities are publishing not only lecture notes but also online courses, Europe should also support these activities.

Open Access to publicly founded research results is also essential for up-to-date knowledge and the development of new innovations.

ECJ: The functionality of a computer program and the programming language cannot be protected by copyright

News to complete our legal knowledge on the Directive 2009/24/EC . Case law is developing:

According to the Court of Justice of the European Union: The functionality of a computer program and the programming language cannot be protected by copyright.

On the basis of those considerations, the Court holds that neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a  computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of expression. Accordingly, they do not enjoy copyright protection.

 

To accept that the functionality of a computer program can be protected by copyright would amount to making it possible to monopolise ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development.

Hungarian government sponsors development of ODF tools

FS news from Hungary 🙂

The Hungarian government is investing 370 million HUF (about 1,23 million euro) in a three-year project to improve applications which use the open document format (ODF). The funds are shared between the software engineering department at the University of Szeged and Multiracio, an open source IT specialist developing EuroOffice, office applications based on LibreOffice and OpenOffice.

Gijs HILLENIUS on April 25, 2012, European Commission- Joinup

University of Szeged, Institute of Informatics, Department of Software Engineering

DFD & EU

This years DFD was a great success, especially the handcuffs mission.
Even Neelie Kroes, vice President of the European Commission, received a pair of them.[1]

I’d like to highlight the best comment on the issue from Caroline De Cock:

‘Kroes was particularly pleased with her handcuffs’ http://ow.ly/ayoJ5 #girlsjustwannahavefun cc @neeliekroeseu

Already looking forward next years DFD 🙂

[1] See her reaction and articles writing about DFD: The Guardian, Wired UK, PCWorld