FSFE Newsletter - November 2017

Written by

Erik Albers on 2017-11

The FSFE presents modernised Fiduciary Licensing Agreement 2.0

The FSFE's Fiduciary License Agreement (FLA) was initially introduced in 2002, to address the challenge of managing rights and content within a Free Software project over long periods of time. The FLA is a well-balanced contributor agreement, which gives the trustee, responsible for managing the rights within a Free Software project, power and responsibility to make sure the contributed software always remains free and open. This way the project, together with all the respective contributors, is protected against any possible misuse of power by a new copyright holder.

However, the last review of the initial FLA was back in 2007 and we are happy to present an improved and modernised version - FLA-2.0. The biggest improvements are that the FLA-2.0 now also covers patents and enables more practical licensing options directed towards third parties – including referencing an external licensing policy. In addition, the new wording is much improved both in its compatibility with more jurisdictions as well as being easier for everybody to understand and apply.

For FLA-2.0, the FSFE joined forces with ContributorAgreements.org and integrated the FLA-2.0 into its Copyright Licensing Agreement (CLA) chooser/generator, in order to make the use of the FLA easier both for projects and for developers. As a side-effect, all CLA on ContributorAgreements.org have been updated as well, following some of the improvements from the FLA.

General Assembly 2017: new members, new roles and new directions

The members of the Free Software Foundation Europe held their General Assembly on October 15 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The annual meeting is held to discuss strategies for the upcoming year and to set the overall direction of the organisation. Amongst other things, the General Assembly prepared a route to some reforms of the organisational structure and adopted an overall Code of Conduct for the FSFE. Patrick Ohnewein was elected as the new Financial Officer, and six new members joined the association. You can read more details in the official minutes and a summary about the accepted proposals in the corresponding news-item.

Participants of the General Assembly 2017.

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What else have we done? Inside and Outside the FSFE

The Free Software Foundation Europe released its next version of REUSE practices to make computers understand software copyrights and licenses. The REUSE page now also comes with an explanatory video as well as a set of developer tools and examples which show the REUSE practices in action.
The FSFE's Vice President Heiki Lõhmus explains the background about decisions for future changes to FSFE membership and the removal of the Fellowship Representatives during the General Assembly 2017.
As in previous editions of the Chaos Communication Camp, the FSFE will set up an assembly during 34C3 for all friends of Free Software and is running a call for participation until November 19.
At the beginning of October, 32 European Ministers signed the Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment. The FSFE's policy analyst Polina Malaja writes about FSFE's input and the good process involved in this declaration.
The FSFE's Executive Director Jonas Öberg blogs about the steps he took to make cURL REUSE compliant.
André Ockers analyses the Dutch coalition agreement on the matter of software and misses any support of Free Software within.
Tarin Gamberini evaluates that in the last semester, eight Italian Regions have reduced advertisement of proprietary PDF readers on their website, and that one region has increased its support for Free Software PDF readers.
Hannes Hauswedell explains how to use FSFE's Gitea and/or Github to host comments in statically generated blogs and in a privacy-friendly way.
The FSFE was present at the Open Source Summit 2017 in Prague, Czech Republic. The FSFE's president Matthias Kirschner gave a talk about "Limux: The Loss of a Lighthouse", and Polina Malaja about "DSM, EIF, RED: Acronyms on the EU Level and Why They Matter for Software Freedom".
Jonas Öberg was at the Open Source Strategy Forum in New York to present updates to FSFEs' REUSE practices.
The FSFE's country coordinator Germany Björn Schiessle gave a talk about how to avoid digital dependencies at the Fellbacher Weltwochen.
The FSFE's country coordinator Italy, Natale Vinto, gave a talk about Public Money? Public Code! at Linux Day Milano to celebrate Linux Day, a national manifestation to discuss about Linux and free software.

Do not miss it! Upcoming events with the FSFE

Always find the FSFE's future events listed on our events page.

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If you would like to share any thoughts, pictures, or news, send them to us. As always, the address is newsletter@fsfe.org. We're looking forward to hearing from you!

Thanks to our community, all the volunteers, supporters and donors who make our work possible. And thanks to our translators, who enable you to read this newsletter in your mother tongue.

Your editor,
Erik Albers

Help us grow and make a difference in 2017