IFSO Blog

Free Software in education survey, UK

Ben — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:00:51 +0000

Guido Arnold has an entry on his FSFE blog covering the results of a survey in the UK on free software (also called ‘open source’ in the report), which seem generally fairly positive.

Talk at Science Gallery, Dublin: 12th May

Ben — Tue, 10 May 2011 21:17:15 +0000

Looks interesting:

Open Minds: James Boyle

Professor James Boyle [...] has been the Chairman of Creative Commons
and is the co-founder of Science Commons.

Science Gallery, Dublin, 12th May starting 18:15.

A discussion on the role of ‘IP’ in various fields. An earlier version of
their page mentioned patents, which would be of interest to IFSO members.

IFSO letter against EU copyright extension

Ciaran — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:24:45 +0000

Dear Mr. Crowley,

Irish Free Software Organisation (IFSO) opposes the extension of copyright
which may be put to a vote in JURI today or tomorrow, and we ask that you do
the same. Further, we ask for your support in requesting a new first
reading for this proposed directive.

Software companies with dominant market positions are increasingly using the
copyright of cultural works as a barrier to block other software developers.
Due to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), music lovers can be required
to use the software of a small group of “approved” large software companies,
or be blocked from listening to DRM’d music.

A few large companies are protected from competition, and the majority of
software developers are locked out – including all the “small artists” of
the software field.

For people who object to DRM, or who don’t find any acceptable software
among the “approved” group, there is still public domain works. Extending
copyright impoverishes the public domain and our cultural heritage.

Below is a selection of links to independent studies highlighting the harms
of copyright extension.

Yours sincerely,
Ciarán O’Riordan, +32 487 64 17 54
Irish Free Software Organisation
http://ifso.ie/

8 Universities and policy centres issued this 2-page
statement about how the proposal would harm Europe’s culture
and economy:
http://www.cippm.org.uk/downloads/Press%20Release%20Copyright%20Extension.pdf
UK government’s “Gower’s review”, which concluded that:
“The European Commission should retain the length of
protection on sound recordings and performers’ rights at 50
years.” (page “56″ – which is the 60th page of the PDF document)

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pbr06_gowers_report_755.pdf
Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam:
“Never Forever: Why Extending the Term of Protection for Sound
Recordings is a Bad Idea”

http://www.ivir.nl/publications/helberger/EIPR_2008_5.pdf

Tenth birthday of Free Software Foundation Europe!

Ben — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:05:03 +0000

Free Software Foundation Europe is ten years old this March. FSFE was founded in 2001 as “an organization dedicated to Free Software activities in Europe” and “the official sister organization of the Free Software Foundation in the United States” in Europe.

Please consider joining the FSFE Fellowship to support their work for software freedom in Europe.

Local Government Computer Services Board moving to Free Software

Ben — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 22:57:27 +0000

Reported in the Irish Times for 2011-02-18:

Computer services board drops Microsoft

THE LOCAL Government Computer Service Board, a flagship Microsoft client, is moving to open-source software after nearly 10 years of allegiance.

Assistant director Tim Willoughby is quoted as giving several reasons for the move:

Cost: budgets are being cut, and the annual payment for the Software Assurance scheme is too high: ‘We can’t afford it.’
No vendor lock-in: ‘We don’t want our data to be stuck in old infrastructure where we have to pay somebody to get it out.’
Openness: ‘We want to approach them with open technologies and open standards.’

The article claims: Any new IT projects will use open source software, a process already under way.

The move is described in terms of ‘Open Source’ rather than ‘Free Software’, but this is a very significant announcement, and very welcome. It is particularly encouraging that the freedoms of Free Software play a large part in the arguments made by the LGCSB.

[Original article]

Free Software Foundation: Call for nominations for the 13th Annual Free Software Awards

Ben — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 23:10:14 +0000

The FSF is soliciting nominations for two awards:

Award for the Advancement of Free Software
Award for Projects of Social Benefit

If you would like to put an individual or project forward for these awards, please do so on or before Wednesday, 16 February 2011. Details in the story on the FSF page.

FSFE fellows: election for Fellowship seat

Ben — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 22:30:11 +0000

Those of you who are fellows of the FSFE (and I would encourage you to join the fellowship if you haven’t already) can this month vote to choose between two candidates for a Fellowship General Assembly seat. Visit the election page to read about the candidates and make your choice, then cast your vote via the link which will have been emailed to you.

Free Software Foundation appeal

Ben — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:54:35 +0000

On the FSF website, Benjamin Mako Hill argues that the increasing use of computers to communicate makes the question of software freedom more important. Only with Free Software does the user have complete control over the technology they use, and also over their data. The FSF — IFSO’s ancestor organisation — is looking for new members to support their work towards software freedom. They also encourage existing members to contribute further if they can.

Free Software happenings in Europe

Ben — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:07:46 +0000

A couple of things of interest from the January 2011 FSFE newsletter:

Introducing children and teachers to the idea of Free Software, based around the Lego Mindstorms platform. Workshop report.

Progress with the ‘Free Software PDF Readers’ campaign, which aims to stop public institutions advertising non-Free PDF readers. In many countries, the response has been good. Ireland’s ‘buglist’.

The European Interoperability Framework document has improved markedly over previous versions from a Free Software point of view, thanks to the work of the FSFE. Press release from the FSFE.

English is a broken langauge

Paul — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 23:07:55 +0000

Usually the ability to use English accords a lot of advantages to it’s users. When it comes to software and in particular free software the usefulness of English fails the software community, of users, developers advocates, in fact everybody.

Free in everyday English has many meanings, however it is usually used in the context of “costless”, as opposed to Freedom. This leaves people with strange ideas about what Free Software is.

Let me give you a one liner which clears up how the word Free applies to Free Software.

Free as in Freedom, the freedom to use, study, run and share software with access to the source code is the definition when you see the word Free being used on this blog.

The right to say this comes with the licences we see attached to Free Software. There are a lot of licences and here is a good refrence for some of them:

The GNU websites list of licences