The European Parliament has rejected ACTA today at 12:56 CEST. There were 478 against, 39 in favour, 165 abstention. This means that the treaty is effectively dead. In theory, the remaining countries that are party to the agreement could still adopt it, but it’s unlikely that they’ll bother. It’s also a humiliating defeat for the Read more »
Yesterday, the European Court of Justice ruled that users may resell software licenses. It’s an important decision – for proprietary software. (Human-readable press release here.) The case deals with the question of whether it’s ok to resell the right to use a program. If we were talking about apples or cars, no sane person would Read more »
Sometimes, a government just gets it right. The Basque Country in Spain has just introduced a policy that’s eminently sensible: Software developed with public funds will be released as Free Software by default. Citizens, companies, and other public bodies will be able to use, study, share and improve that software as they see fit. Before Read more »
Staffers in the European Parliament are facing a challenge to their ethics. A company is offering all of them a gift which could not only compromise their independence, but also get them in hot water for copyright infringement. The people working at the European Parliament now need to make a choice: Leave the gift on Read more »
The debate around ACTA is in full swing. The European Commission pretends that there’s nothing to see here, please move on. The informed European public thinks otherwise, prompting tens of thousands of people to take to the streets repeatedly. This has prompted the Commission to play for time. It has asked the European Court of Read more »
The Wall Street Journals has an interview with Kader Arif, who recently resigned as the EP’s rapporteur for ACTA. He says that “either ACTA is useless, or it is a threat”. I recommend you go read the whole thing. It’s a concise summary of some of ACTA’s greatest risks, plus interesting background on goings-on in Read more »
For today’s I love Free Software Day, I’ve thought a little about what makes me get behind the keyboard every morning. Turns out there are lots of reasons, but here are two of them. The great thing about Free Software is that it gives me control of my own life. I want to be able Read more »
This Monday we pushed out a press release about the distributed Free Software search engine YaCy. This PR saw impressive take-up around the world, and generated quite a bit of attention. Perhaps inevitably, some articles branded YaCy as a “Google killer”. As covered by articles at Web Pro News and the Wall Street Journal‘s tech Read more »
Today we published a press release about a distributed Free Software search engine: YaCy 1.0. At FSFE, we don’t usually do press releases about new software. But this time, it’s about a broader point: The rise of distributed systems. There are more and more Free Software projects that replace centrally run services with distributed ones. Read more »
At the excellent (as usual) FSCONS conference in Gothenburg today, Erik Josefsson gave a talk about Free Software politics in the European Parliament. He mentioned some very useful tools that help us keep track of what’s going on in the parliament, and use our influence to change Europe’s politics for the better, one decision at Read more »